Fire School water flow record broken: 40,000 gallons pumped per minute

COLLEGE STATION – The music was missing, but like the Bellagio Fountains, the water display was eye-popping, and a Fire School record was broken. The Advanced Industrial Fire Apparatus Practices class pumped approximately 40,000 gallons per minute (GPM) during a water flow exercise at the Brayton Fire Training Field lake.

Nineteen students attending this year’s course had the opportunity to use the skills they had learned for this capstone exercise at the 2015 Industrial Fire School, operated by the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX). The students had to configure the equipment, assemble the system and operate it to achieve the greatest capacity possible from drafting. The exercise simulated using drafting and pumping to extinguish a large industrial fire.

The record-breaking pump operations exercise on July 16 was accomplished through the assistance of companies who brought pumper trucks, aerial platform ladder trucks, trailer pumps, remote-powered hydraulic supply pumps, trailer mounted high-flow delivery nozzles, up to 12-inch diameter hose, high-capacity hose storage and retrieval equipment, and remote foam proportioning equipment for the big flow exercise, said Mark Turvey, Guest Instructor and Assistant Fire Chief, Lubrizol Corp. Texas Plants.

“The class was pretty exciting, due to the fabulous support from many different vendors who brought equipment to the school for the students to use,” Turvey said. “This year’s class, along with guidance and assistance from the instructors, achieved close to 40,000 GPM, which might be not only a record for the school, but possibly a world record for total fire flow at one time.”

“The exercise was a lot of fun, but also a lot of work,” he added. “We had over a mile and a half of hose on the ground.”

Vendors and companies who brought firefighting equipment for the exercise included Custom Fire Apparatus, ExxonMobil Mont Belvieu, Ferrara Fire Apparatus, Global Pump, Hytrans Systems, Lubrizol Deer Park, LyondellBasell Channelview, National Foam, Pierce Manufacturing, Siddons-Martin Emergency Group, Sutphen, Task Force Tips, Training Specialties Incorporated, W.S. Darley and Company, Williams Fire & Hazard Control and U.S. Fire Pump.

Watch a video of the 2015 water flow exercise.