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| We (My dad's baler and I'm on the FD) had a large marsh fire this summer where several departments were out with brush pickup and UTV rigs. CAF on a UTV was a very potent combination from both capacity and personnel exhaustion. Water/foam on a UTV when working any long fire line, you end up spending more time running for refills than putting out fire unless you put a big tank on that gets the UTV stuck in places a pickup does. Besides the extended range, the lightweight hose of the CAF was a game changer when I used the neighbor's system on mop up after dragging my water hose around for half an afternoon.
UTV with CAF- great go anywhere tool with a lot of suppression capacity. Probably similar to a pickup with a water skid
UTV with water/foam- limited volume capacity, but gets you in places where a pickup won't go but certainly better than hoofing in piss cans do to it by hand.
UTV with bigger water tank- useless. Doesn't go any deeper than a pickup before getting stuck, still not as much water capacity as a truck.
Truck with water/foam- faster deploying than a UTV if you can access the scene with a truck. The standard rig around here.
Truck with CAF- I might get tired before running out of product!
We'd never be able to go where we have to go with our pickups if we were carrying 600 gallons of water. Our skids are 300-350 gallons. CAF on a UTV seemed to equate to our pickup capacity. I could see us putting CAF on one of our brush trucks rather than replacing one of the 3 brush pickups we currently have to maintain fleet capacity. | |
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Fire Fighting Question - Foam or CAFs in wildland applications
