Training Day - Rural Water Supply

Training Day for the Shippensburg Fire Department last week covered rural water supply. Rural water supply is necessary when there are no fire hydrants available to get water from in case of an emergency. In that case a pumper would set up at the water supply. It could be a farm pond, a stream or even a fire hydrant that is far from the scene of the fire. At the same time a fire engine is at the fire using it's limited supply of on-board water. A portable pond is set up (basically a collapsible pool) The tanker dumps its load of water into the portable pond and returns to the fill site to reload. Most fire tankers hold between 1000 gallons of water up to and exceeding 3000 gallons. And this scenario is played out as long as needed. In a real fire situation there would be multiple ponds, one siphoning into another, and multiple tankers, staggered out in order to allow a consistent flow of water to the fire.