Piercing Nozzles, Do You Use Them?

[RWC130 594]

First Attack

Firefighters Can't See Through Walls.

With The IFI First Attack Piercing Fog Nozzle They Don't Need To

Vol 21 No 2

By: Anton Riecher

Homes built using cedar shake shingles and siding are usually considered flammable enough by firefighters. But the responders using an abandoned house in Hoquiam, WA, for a test of the International Fog, Inc., (IFI) First Attack piercing nozzle guaranteed additional flammability by dousing the interior with kerosene two days earlier.

Black smoke followed by flames filled the front rooms. Wielding the slender four-foot First Attack nozzle, a single firefighter steps forward and rams the pointed tip through a wall. A cloud of water mist quickly replaces the glowing heat visible through a window. In seconds the fire disappears.

"People come out to these old towns like Hoquiam looking for retirement homes," said First Attack inventor Eugene Ivy. "They buy these older homes and fix them up. But in adding a new room they create a bunch of hidden areas. The fire chief in Hoquiam said they had four houses with the roofs burned off."

In each case smoldering embers in those hidden areas had reignited after the firefighters had returned to the station, taking the roofs off before they could return, he said.

IFI designed the First Attack nozzle to deal specifically with this type of problem. It is equipped with a stainless steel tip honed to a 25 degree angle similar to a syringe. Behind this is a rotating sleeve made from Kevlar that creates the desired 30-foot in diameter fog pattern.

"It atomizes the water into a fog pattern of droplets sized anywhere between five and 20 microns," Ivy said.

That mist almost immediately converts to steam, robbing the fire of its heat and effectively smothering it.

"I have put out entire house fires in six to eight seconds, using as little as three to five gallons of water," Ivy said.

The nozzle left Hoquiam Fire Chief Ray Pumphrey impressed.

"What really sold me was watching our fire crews use the nozzle in actual live fire conditions," Pumphrey said. "None of the fog nozzles we currently use could match the fog pattern and protection that this nozzle provides. My guys especially like it for its capability to pierce walls and ceilings to reach the hidden and hard to reach spaces such as attics, knee walls and crawl spaces."

Available in two, three and four foot lengths, the First Attack normally operates in a water pressure range between 50 to 225 psi. However, Ivy has tested it at as much as 400 psi.

"One fireman can hold this nozzle by the butt plate and still move it around," Ivy said. "The spinning mechanism acts almost like a gyroscope. It self-centers once it starts, making it easy to move it where you want."

It also produces a shield that can reduce the amount of heat reaching the firefighter by 80 percent, he said. In industrial fire fighting, that can prove valuable when moving in to block valves.

"I used a thermal camera at one of our training burns," Ivy said. "Directed at the fire at close range the device pegged out at 888 degrees F. Then the firefighter put the piercing nozzle through the side of the house. The

temperature dropped to 128 degrees."

Ivy designed the First Attack nozzle for volunteer fire departments with limited manpower and water resources. But the protection that the First Attack offers from radiant heat suggests other applications. One such application would be flammable fuel fires. That combined with quick deployments makes the First Attack something that industrial chiefs should look at.

"If they had a pump house on fire, the firefighters could go right through the door or through the side," Ivy said. "I’ve put this through brick, cinder block, aluminum siding and un-reinforced concrete."

It could be used against fires involving boats, cars and even aircraft, he said. The piercing tip can be quickly replaced with a blunt "bull nose" tip that can be used as an effective battering ram when needed.

The nozzle and Ivy have a long history. He first recognized the need for a piercing fog nozzle in 1985 as a firefighter with the Port Arthur (TX) Fire Department.

"We had a supermarket catch fire during a thunderstorm," Ivy said. "The fire got up into the false ceiling of the structure. I was in a snorkel basket spraying water down on top of firemen trying to cut holes in the roof ahead of the fire. All we were doing was feeding it what it wanted – more oxygen. I knew there had to be a way to get a sufficient amount of water into an enclosed area without feeding it oxygen."

Ivy worked on the design for nearly a year before getting a machinist friend to build the first one. As compared to today’s largest First Attack nozzle which is 4 feet long and weighs 17 pounds, the first nozzle was 5 ½ feet long and weighed 32 pounds. Ivy describes it as a "monster."

"I presented one to the Port Arthur Fire Department," Ivy said. "Unbeknownst to me the Port Arthur mayor put my name in the hat for a national inventor award." In 1989, his nozzle earned him an award as one of the top 20 inventors of the year from the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago.

In the 1990s Ivy put the nozzle aside to concentrate on his personal life, moving to Portland, OR, with his new wife. Then, four years ago, a friend urged Ivy to put his nozzle back on the market. His friend and several others became investors in the new project.

Support came from other quarters as well. A fire department in northern Washington state donated two fully functional fire trucks equipped with 1,000 gpm pumps to Ivy for his live fire demonstrations such as the abandoned house fire in Hoquiam..

"The idea was to pull up in front of the burning house with two guys on the truck," Ivy said. "One guy is on the pump and one guy is on the nozzle. You knock down the house fire and then pull the hose reel off, go through the house and mop up."

At present, fire departments in New Mexico and Washington state are using the nozzle. Hoquiam is only one of 15 departments in the Grays Harbor Fire District. Nine of those departments now have the First Attack nozzle.

"The most difficult thing about getting departments to try the First Attack nozzle is that it’s new technology," Ivy said. "Big departments have embraced new technology but a lot of small departments are still training the way they’ve been training for the last 200 years." This is new technology for an old adversary.

www.fireworld.com

Anyone use this?

I remember seeing a Piercing Nozzle used for Car Fires but Structure Fires?

Interesting....

[res6cue 67]

Well first of all, clearly what you posted is an advertisement for the company that makes this particular brand. The headline itself ("Firefighters Can't See Through Walls") is just absolutely silly in today's day and age of thermal imaging. There's no way I would trust sticking a piercing nozzle into a wall over checking it with the TIC and pulling the sheetrock to make SURE there's no extension.

Yes, our dept has two piercing nozzles, but we rarely use them. One is in a compartment on one engine and the other is attached to a dead load of 2" in the front bumper of another engine. We've only ever used them on car fires, but quickly realized they're mainly just a novelty. By the time you get them in place you could've had the hood or truck popped or pried up enough to stick the regular nozzle in.

[res6cue 67]

Wait a minute...I just reread the article. Are they suggesting this nozzle should be deployed from the EXTERIOR?!? Wow, I've seen and heard it all now! So basically it's some kind of fancy hybrid between a piercing nozzle and cellar nozzle? Give me a break. Um, what ever happened to going in for a SEARCH ahead of the line? God help anyone who's inside when you pump the place full of steam. This is yet another perfect example of fog nozzle technology gone horribly wrong.

[Guest alsfirefighter]

As with anything else, certain things have a time and place for everything, with proper training, size up and tactic.

First, most I've dealt with are not anything like a fog nozzle, they deliver a broken stream much like a navy nozzle. Fog nozzles = uniformed droplets...broken stream ununiformed and various. They even mention this in the article, I just think its an overstatement calling it a fog. It produces different droplet size.

There are several piercing nozzles on the market and they can be useful in some situations. Like void spaces where opening up may take some time. They work extremely well on van fires where there are no windows in the back or in the rear doors. The angus tool that you swing like a sledge hammer is the best for compartment (engine/trunk) that I've still seen yet.

On a side note, if you don't know what to look for with a TIC when staring at a wall. You will not know if there is active fire on the other side being they cannot see through solid objects. So no unless we bang holes we still can't see through walls. As well as if someone is in a room that is well involved, steam is the least of their problems.

This actually uses that "technology" in a semi correct way, if the compartment they are sticking it in is confined, like a room with its door shut. This is indirect attack..(ugh that word), at its text book use.

Not fool proof, but a different spin (no pun intended) on the conventional piercing nozzle designs.

[Captain 402 3]

Thermal Image Cameras Dont see through walls . They only give u an image of the heat differential.

[IzzyEng4 427]

We have a piercing rod that can be attached to one of our crosslays. On e crosslay is set up with a shutoff and has a fog tip attached and a smooth bore set up available. IF we need the piercing rod, we attach it to this shut off and use it for car fires, box trucks or structure fires as needed. We go this as a gift back in the 1980's from on of the housing associations in town to aid in fighting fires at the project buildings in town. When we broke the female hose connection, we were almost at a loss with out it because we used it so much for certain attacks, but it is repaired and back in service. Piercing nozzels are an invaluable tool.

[Remember585 815]

We carry two piercing nozzles on our Engine. One is a steel pipe, about 5 feet long that connects to the 1 3/4". The other is that Amkus Car Fire tool - the one that looks like a sledge that you can drive through the hood of a vehicle fire.

We recently used our long one (no puns) at a railcar that was full of garbage and smoldering at the bottom. We had the bucket of the Truck up and used a length of 1 3/4" to use this. We drove it in from the top of the garbage pile from the bucket to get at the seat of the fire. Between that and the ladder pipe, we were able to snuff the stubborn fire.

In the nearly 15 years I've been a part of my FD, I have seen the long piercing nozzle used at a garbage compactor fire, car fires and a house fire. As for the other one, it's been trained with but not actually used at an incident yet.

[mfc2257 464]

Anyone use this?

I remember seeing a Piercing Nozzle used for Car Fires but Structure Fires?

Interesting.... 

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Here is a long story for those who might be interested. For those who aren't the answer is yes I've used an old fashioned piercing nozzle to slow down a fire moving under a roofline at a refrigeration facility.

Not that one in the article... But I've used a piercing nozzle once...in my college days in Gettysburg we were the first due truck and second due engine (the engine almost rolled over going through town but that’s a different story) to a refrigerated apple storage warehouse for Knouse Foods (makers of Musselmans Applesauce) about 15 miles away. At this huge structure there were several hazards that prevented the truck crew from opening up the roof quickly. Most importantly the refrigeration lines filled with Anhydrous Ammonia that were present in the building. A few months before this call the Chief of the very department whose box we were responding to was killed while working as a contractor and servicing one of these refrigeration lines when it ruptured. We were all a little on edge...

Unfortunately the fire was running though the void between the cement ceiling of the refrigeration unit and the metal/tar roof. The building was preplanned by the first due department as well as our department being that we had first due truck responsibilities. A part of this included having diagrams of all the vital areas of the building. Using these plans and the help of the building manager we found a safe place to insert the piercing nozzle through the roof. The result was an impinging fog that bounced off the cement ceiling of the refrigeration unit and significantly knocked down the fire until the building manager and roof ops officer could determine safe places to cut into the roof without compromising FF safety with a potentially deadly leak of Anhydrous Ammonia