Dump Site Drill

or our June training session, Pond Hill-Lily Lake ran a Dump Site drill that included setting up a single pond and dual pond dump site, supplying water between multiple ponds, and doing a dry run with a tanker.

What is a "Dump Site"?  During a large fire a lot of water is needed to either extinguish the fire or to simply control it.  This water is normally obtained via fire hydrants, directly out of local pools/ponds, or water tankers.  However during large brush fires other sources may be used, such as planes and relays.  The dump site is used mostly during rural fires where hydrants are not available or hydrants are not big enough for the fire.  It is generally one or two fire engines set up with one or more portable ponds and is the receiving point for water tankers or even a water relay system.  The dump site is directly responsible for supplying the fire apparatus (fire trucks) at the fire with the water when needed.

Our drill was focused on the setup of a dump site for both a single pond and dual pond setup.  Most residential structure fires and brush fires only use one pond, but larger buildings and commercial fires can need two or more.  The one pond setup is fairly simple and was done simply to setup and run, but the dual pump starts to get more complex with more operations being run at once.  Once the ponds where setup crews where explained and shown different ways of setting up the ponds and the reasoning behind it  After that a dry run was done by a tanker to show newer members the full cycle of a dump site.

We thank everyone who turned out for the drill as it was a great success and we hope our members walked away with more skills to use in the case of an emergency.