Re: Glasgow airport attack

Mike Ross wrote:
On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 06:33:33 +0100, Palindrome <me9@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Mike Ross wrote:

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 18:52:42 GMT, "ian field" <dai.ode@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


No, they were working at the extreme range of their hose streams,
staying as far from the car as possible - which is a bloody good idea
when you're dealing with a car that's apparently been valet-parked by
terrorists and is known or suspected to contain further devices. I've
seen the video and they didn't do a bad job, by my lights.

Google 'BLEVE' - that car had four bloody LPG cylinders in it, those
firefighters were in very considerable danger. I'd have been tempted
to put up a couple of master streams and get the hell out of there...
or just left it to burn, which is the best thing to do if the gas
cylinders are venting & burning. Cool it but don't put it out.

So why not use one of the airport foam monitor vehicles?

Their cabs are designed to protect the operators to a far greater extent than normal cabs and far, far more than firemen on foot.

They could have put out this relatively small fire almost in seconds - with little risk to anyone.


Three reasons I can think of:

1. Their cabs are NOT more protected than normal cabs, not from the
kind of explosive blast a BLEVE can produce - they have those big
windscreens - they have protection from the extreme radiant heat of
aircraft fuel fires but they don't provide any kind of protection from
IEDs. Also a foam stream doesn't have the range of a water stream;
they would have to get closer to apply it. And foam is designed to put
out large volumes (puddles) of burning flammable liquids - I didn't
see any of that, I just saw a fully-involved car fire, we use water on
those all the time.

2. See above - assuming they knew there were gas cylinders (which they
might well have done, they were probably visible in the back of the
Jeep) and they were involved in fire and venting, you do NOT want to
put them out - then you have a lot of unburned gas floating around the
front of the airport looking for an ignition source, can cause an even
bigger problem. You just want to cool things down and protect
exposures (i.e. the front of the airport building)

3. There were probably still aircraft taking off and/or landing in the
minutes immediately after the attack; in order for that to happen the
full legally-required compliment of fire appliances have to be in
service with full crew on the airfield.


Yep, you could have added that the land-side area was the responsibility of the local fire brigade - not the air-side fire service.

--
Sue

.

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