Airport Rescue and Firefighting Services in The United Kingdom 6
Airport Rescue and Firefighting Services in The United Kingdom 6 : Fire Appliances: The number and type of firefighting appliances based at an airport will be determined by the airport's category. Airports in the UK are categorised from 1 to 10, dependent on the type and size of aircraft they handle, so a category 10 airport caters for the biggest aircraft and therefore requires extensive rescue and firefighting cover as determined by the TRA. The fire appliances used by Airport Fire and Rescue Services normally consist of a fleet of large high-volume pumping vehicles capable of carrying an enormous amount of foam, or other fire extinguishing media and equipment on bulk, and then applying it under massive pressure and volume at the fire scene. Most airport fire appliances are equipped with a roof-mounted high volume 'monitor' or 'nozzle' which can shoot fire extinguishing media huge distances. This means that an approaching fire appliance can begin tackling flames before it has arrived close to the scene of the fire. A new type of roof-mounted monitor has been introduced in the UK; commonly known as a 'snozzle', it consists of an extensible boom capable of reaching the upper decks of the A380 to extinguish fires and is equipped with an infra-red camera, a variable output 'nozzle' and a device resembling a spike that can pierce the fuselage of an aircraft and deliver large amounts of water and foam inside the aircraft. This makes airport firefighting safer as firefighters do not need to set foot inside the aircraft to extinguish fires, as they can do it from the safety of their fire appliance using the snozzle. Because of their sheer size, airport fire appliances require powerful engines to propel them. In fact by law the airport fire appliances should be capable of reaching any incident within the airport (including the predetermined boundaries outside of the airport) within a set time of three minutes (as set by the CAA). Augmenting the capability of the huge fire appliances are vehicles known as either first attack/first strike or Rapid Intervention vehicles. They are capable of arriving at the scene of an incident much quicker to begin rescue or firefighting operations. Such appliances vary from small Range Rover-based fire appliances, to much larger truck-based pumps. In larger airports the rapid intervention vehicles and high volume pumping appliance (volumes up to 5000 litre/minute) are supported by "domestic" type fire appliances similar to those used by the local authority FRS. They are mainly used to respond to emergencies within the buildings around the airport, but also assist at aircraft incidents. A typical category 10 airport, in this case London Heathrow, operates out of two fire stations (located in the east and west of the airport) in order to achieve the three minute response time to any location within the airport boundary. Each station operates a Scania domestic pump, two six-wheel-drive major foam tenders and a similar but smaller four-wheel-drive light foam tender. The Heathrow FRS also operates two Mitsubishi Shogun command vehicles out of the main fire station, a Scania hose-layer, several auxiliary vehicles (such as a personnel carrier) along with a couple of reserve foam tenders and, to suit category 10 requirements, a Scania 42 m aerial ladder platform to reach the upper deck of the A380
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