By Justine Frederiksen
The Ukiah Daily Journal
POTTER VALLEY, Calif. — Instead of waiting for a large blaze that sends local firefighters scrambling for enough water, the Potter Valley Fire Department recently tested a system of quickly delivering a large amount of water for a substantial amount of time – without a fire hydrant in sight.
“We were able to sustain 500 gallons per minute for two hours, which is really impressive,” said PVFD Capt. Frost Pauli, noting that the drill his department hosted Feb. 8 had been in the works even before the most recent devastating fires in Los Angeles County that had firefighters facing flames with dry hydrants and hoses.
“There are no fire hydrants anywhere in Potter Valley, so if we didn’t have agricultural ponds or other ag water, we wouldn’t have any water to fight fires with,” said Pauli, explaining that the training last weekend was intended to test a system of retrieving a large amount of water, then seeing how long, and how fiercely, that water could be directed at a fire.
“It went really well – sustaining 500 gallons a minute is really impressive,” Pauli said of the drill, which involved having several full water tenders arrive at the rodeo grounds and empty their loads into “essentially swimming pools that we can load onto our fire engines.”
Usually, Pauli said, “If you empty out a water tender, you’re stuck waiting for the next one to arrive,” but filling up the pools provided a constant source of water to battle a large fire.
“And instead of just waiting for that big one to happen, we are preparing for it,” said Pauli, noting that the fire departments received permission from nearby landowners to pull water from their ponds for the drill, and “while 500 gallons a minute might sound like a lot,” in total they probably used about 40,000 gallons, an amount he said “would not lower the pond at all; you couldn’t even tell any water had been taken.”
Given that the water sitting in ponds, pools and even ditches is crucial to their fire-fighting abilities, Pauli said that firefighters rely on “Map Books, which show every water source and structure,” and are available in physical book-form as well as phone apps.
The fire departments participating in the training hosted by the Potter Valley Fire Department last weekend were the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, the Mendocino Unit of CAL FIRE, the Brooktrails Fire Department, the Little Lake-Willits Fire Department, the Hopland Fire Protection District and the Redwood Valley-Calpella Fire Department.
Along with testing out a new water gathering system, Pauli noted that having regular training between departments is crucial in preparing for large emergencies of all kinds, as they “help the staff of all departments get to know each other and what each (person and station) is bringing to the table,” such as equipment, skillsets and abilities.
“We had been planning this training since November, after the previous one was hosted in Ukiah,” said Pauli, adding that “about 60 responders gathered for the training, which focused on “Rural Water Supply for large fires.”
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