Customer: Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue.

Risk type

• Tyre fires
• Fires in open spaces
• Mixed fuel fires (diesel, wood, rubber)
• Sofa fires
• Cooking oil fires
• Gas cooling
• Compartment fires

Issue
With the modernisation and cost cutting in the fire service many are looking to new suppliers for revolutionary fire fighting technologies. They are under pressure to reduce costs however keeping their teams’ safety at the forefront. 365 products (e.g. products which can be in use all year round) are a priority.

Product / Solution selected
Having spoken with Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue we decided the best solution was to invite them to our research centre in Poland to carry out 2 days of testing according to various realistic scenarios to establish 3 goals.

• Would FireBug technology work for the fires services?
• If it did work, what form would be most effective?
• Establish our systems maximum fire extinguishing capability.

and from these answers we could select the best technology and products. The final product chosen was the RescueMax, our rapid response utility vehicle.

Why
After numerous, successful demonstrations across a section of different fires it was established that there is a place for various different forms of our technology to combat different scenarios and problems that the brigades have to deal with.

The RescueMax rapid response vehicle met GMFRs brief above as a modular, 365 product.

Outcome
We had 11 fire scenarios, which we carried out to test these products such as:
Pallets dosed with petrol and diesel, tyres ignited with petrol, 20 litres of rapeseed cooking oil ignited, sofa fire with petrol, compartment fire simulated by paper in a crib with 3 pallets and 2 chipboards and was redone 4 times at different temperature ranges.
Our Single Fluid System, which is pump driven and skid mounted, fitted to our RescueMax proved hugely successful. The gun has both mist and water jet operated by a lever and hand trigger.

Solution
Our technology could comfortably achieve every scenario that was asked of it. The attendees seemed comfortable with it without any training. We have since developed and refined the RescueMax further to ensure it is maximized fully for fire brigade usage.

We continue to work with many of the UKs leading fire brigades developing our product range to achieve their individual goals and nationwide aim of cost cutting and maximizing product ranges to save time, money and resource.

Customers comments
“Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service had to look at something that would be more cost effective and fulfill the criteria of the modern fire fighting methodology. Working closely with FireBug, we looked at several options that fit this criterion. Being involved with the RescueMax project from the early days it has been very encouraging to work with 2 professional and passionate companies, namely JCB and FireBug that understand the needs of the frontline fire and rescue service. Currently in GMFRS we have worked with FireBug to bespoke our vehicles to suit our every changing needs such as modular pods and snow ploughs. The efficiencies that the WaterMist delivers in the low volume of water required to achieve the same goal has to be seen to be believed.”