We step in when an incident needs far more water than a municipal engine can move. Our transport-ready package – submersible lift pumps, trailer-mounted boosters, remote-controlled monitors, large-diameter hose, foam stocks, and a crew of full-time industrial firefighters – can roll anywhere in North America within hours. Once on scene we plug straight into the incident command system, supply tens of thousands of gallons per minute, and stay until the fire is cold.
Customers aren’t buying hardware so much as guaranteed capacity delivered fast enough to keep a crisis from escalating.
Chris Ferrara
First come the submersibles. Each unit sits under the waterline, so there’s no priming delay, and it lifts roughly 5,000 gpm from a river, canal, or harbor basin. We group two to four together for 10,000–20,000 gpm. That raw volume feeds a booster pump that overcomes friction loss and elevation so pressure holds for up to three miles of twelve-inch hose.
At the far end, portable monitors and proportioners put water or foam precisely where the incident commander wants it. The relay lets us draft from a lake on one side of a refinery, run hose under a highway, and blanket a 200-foot crude tank without relying on hydrants that may be damaged or dry.
Petro-chemical operators lead because a full-surface crude or naphtha fire can exhaust site resources before a control line is set, and insurers now demand flow rates only large mobile systems can meet. Battery-recycling and storage centers are next; thermal-runaway events create extreme heat but little entry space, so they depend on remote cooling streams and oversized water supplies.
Deep-sea terminals face the same challenge with shipboard fires that can quickly outlast onboard freshwater.
Chris Ferrara
We’re also signing regional rail alliances so a rural derailment involving tank cars isn’t waiting for broken mains to be rebuilt before foam can reach the cars.
Dispatch starts with satellite imagery, tagging every usable water source within three miles of the address while another officer reviews inventory sheets to calculate foam demand. That ten-minute survey decides how many pumps, hose beds, and totes roll.
An advance team phones the incident commander, secures a staging area for about twenty vehicles, and gets a radio channel.
On arrival one crew prepares draft points – sometimes digging short ramps or dropping portable weirs – while another lays hose, positions monitors and sets proportioning equipment. Following rehearsed checklists, we usually have water flowing in two to three hours.
Yes. Every purchase includes classroom work on hydraulics, foam chemistry and safety margins, followed by field drills where crews assemble submersibles, align booster shafts, start engines and run monitors against the clock.
Chris Ferrara
We return for annual or quarterly refreshers built around each facility’s worst-case scenario, be it a lightning-struck floating-roof tank or a nighttime container-ship fire. We also teach preventive maintenance – checking wear rings, seals, bearings, and proportioner calibration – so the equipment performs without waiting for outside technicians who might be hundreds of miles away during an emergency.
The new blends don’t form that fast-spreading film, so you need deeper blankets and gentler application. A tank that once settled with 10,000 gpm of AFFF may now need 30,000 gpm of fluorine-free to achieve the same knock-down time.
Viscosity varies widely, so proportioning accuracy is critical; under-metering kills performance and over-metering wastes product. We answered with a containerized positive-displacement injection system that keeps the mix between 0.3 % and 10 % even when line pressure swings, something a traditional venturi eductor can’t do.
Crews wanted longer reach without manual nozzle adjustments, so we built electric-drive monitors with gyroscopic stabilization that hold a tight stream while sweeping. Operators control flow and pattern from a safe position, which keeps people off slippery tank roofs.
We also standardized ISO-container footprints so entire pump or proportioner modules can ship by road, rail, or cargo vessel without special permits, a major request from refinery and port clients who share assets across regions.
The biggest obstacle is access, not technology. Towns and terminals struggle to justify equipment that may sit idle for years, yet the first thirty minutes decide whether an incident lasts days or hours. Regional cost-sharing agreements can place high-flow packages on the road while command staff are still making size-up.
The second gap is reliable water. Drought, aging mains, and low river stages all shrink draft options, so plans need alternate sources – stormwater ponds, reclaimed-water lines, or portable pipelines – paired with pumps that can reach them.
Finally, insurers now want proof of capacity, mobilization times, and joint-drill records. Facilities that supply that documentation are already seeing better premiums, turning preparedness into a financial advantage as much as a safety one.
Treating water supply as a movable asset – submersible lift, booster pressure, and long-range monitors – lets responders put up to 30,000 gpm exactly where it’s needed, meet the higher application rates demanded by new foams, and save critical infrastructure that fixed systems alone would lose.
