West Parkway, Plainfield, CT October 21, 2018

Plainfield, CT tanker drill 10/21/2018.

Dump site was behind Kobyluck's ReadyMix facility on West Parkway in their industrial park.

Tankers:
Dayville ET-263 1500gpm/3000gwt
South Killingly 1500/2500
Moosup T-194 1750/2500
Attawaugan T-162 1750/2850
East Killingly ET-265 1500/2500
Scotland ET-116 1000/2500
Mortlake ET-290 1500/3000
Lisbon T-154 1500/3000
Plainfield ET-295 1500/3000
Oneco ET-268 1500/2500
Griswold ET-355 1500/2000

11 Tankers, 29,350 gallons on wheels.

There were two fill sites. One was at Droll Yankees off Lathrop Extension and was about a 2-1/2 mile round trip (slightly shorter when loaded), I don't know the other location but assume it was about the same distances. Tankers proceeded with traffic obeying regular traffic laws.

I got there towards the end, but have no doubt they sustained 2000gpm during the middle of the drill since they were still in that range even as things were starting to wind down.

I may make some observations where things can be tweaked to squeeze even more efficiency out of things (or where in the right situation you can squeeze more out), but this was a solid B+ and I'm a tough grader. This was a very good, smooth running drill!

Be careful what you paste on Facebook, you never know what riff-raff (like me) you'll attract.

West Parkway, Plainfield, CT October 20, 2018

There was a light rain this morning, so I didn't bother leaving my house till 9:30. Which did present the first challenge of the day, since usually for tanker drills you just follow the sloshes at each intersection to find where they're going...and the roads will still wet while I was searching for them this morning :D

Once nice thing I hadn't seen before for a drill though was marking the intersections the Tankers needed to turn (at least for their final approaches) with cones.

I have seen this done with Fire-Police, but even those folks just don't have the manpower we had 20 or 30 years ago.

And on the way away from the dump site:

Plainfield Tower 195 & Moosup Ladder 194 -- flowing the 2000gpm goal of the drill:
20018-10-21 09:50:00

Six 3,000 gallon drop tanks being pumped by:
Plainfield ET-395 1750/1000
Danielson ET-161 1750/1000
Central Village ET-297 1500/1000

2018-10-21 09:49:44

Both Dayville & South Killingly done and leaving at the same time.
2018-10-21 09:50:56

2018-10-21 09:51:06

As Moosup is coming up to the plate:
2018-10-21 09:51:10

With Attawaugan swinging in behind them:
2018-10-21 09:51:22

2018-10-21 09:51:46

2018-10-21 09:52:28

2018-10-21 09:52:50

Not a great photograph, but the key point is there is a tanker arriving full...
2018-10-21 09:52:58

2018-10-21 09:53:18

Moosup leaving -- 2 minutes, 44 seconds (having done this back when I had to keep track of times on a pad of paper and watch, camera timestamps seem like cheating...)

Note quite parking brake set-to-release time, but close enough for me to do some math.

2,500gwt in 2:44 is 913gpm while taking up a spot at the dump tanks.

Go back a photo and you see that 35 seconds earlier it was down to a trickle. It may not make a difference in any given drill (I don't know how fast they could fill at their sites, and at times the dump tanks were overflowing)...let's do another set of math:

2,300 gallons in 2:10 and drive off dumping the remaining 200 gallons on the road -- 1,064gpm would have been delivered and the next tanker already waiting could have started to get in position.
2018-10-21 09:53:54

2018-10-21 09:54:00

East Killingly ready (with Scotland on approach)...
2018-10-21 09:54:42

...and dumping within 8 seconds.
2018-10-21 09:54:50

2018-10-21 09:54:56

Having to line up all the tanks is what we often have to do -- on most roads and highways around here as it is you'd probably have the pumpers sitting on the (soft) shoulder with one lane filled with drop tanks and another with dumping tankers.

Here it would've made the driver's job easier if the two sets of tanks were separated, and the first set at a bit of an angle so incoming tankersmore easily pull up to them.

2018-10-21 09:55:40

2018-10-21 09:55:54

Mortlake on deck...
2018-10-21 09:56:18

2018-10-21 09:56:46

2018-10-21 09:57:04

2018-10-21 09:57:12

Mortlake pulling in to position -- 1:04 since it was queued up for it's turn.
2018-10-21 09:57:22

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2018-10-21 09:58:52

Lisbon arriving -- nice little sequence because there is two subtle things happening. One, there is a break in arriving tankers (almost 90 seconds until Plainfield arrives). Two -- they fill up one drop tank and backup to continue dumping into another.
2018-10-21 09:59:06

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2018-10-21 10:01:12

2018-10-21 10:01:20

2018-10-21 10:01:56

It's been 1:10 seconds since Plainfield arrived -- they're dumping, Lisbon has gotten on the road, Oneco has parked and is about to open their dump valve.
2018-10-21 10:03:06

2018-10-21 10:03:10

2018-10-21 10:03:14

Drop tank is full!

It also illustrates why not to be afraid to leave a few hundred gallons in the tank, pull up a couple hundred feet if you want to finish dumping-to-empty before going to refill and/or if running an older tanker to store manually-setup chutes -- there is going to be water everywhere anyways.

2018-10-21 10:03:50

Dayville pulling in.
2018-10-21 10:05:14

Griswold ready.
2018-10-21 10:05:54

Dayville about to leave, and Griswold pretty much out of juice.

Dayville leave-to-leave time: 9:50:56 -- 10:07:44 -- 16 minutes, 48 seconds.

By nameplate capacity, and since the tankers were waiting around draining out the last few drops they would be darn close to capacity, that's 29,350 gallons delivered.

1,747 gallons per minute, or 158gpm per tanker.

2018-10-21 10:07:44

South Killingly arriving. I think this illustrates drop tank placement -- the tankers were having a hard time swinging in and getting parallel to the drop tanks in a single motion.
2018-10-21 10:08:44

Pull up, square up, backup up -- backup cameras help a lot, and I'm sure it isn't many years till we have "360" camera views around the large apparatus like some luxury cars do today.
2018-10-21 10:08:48

2018-10-21 10:09:08

South Killingly has impressed me a few times over recent years with having their act together on water moving. Drop tank #1 full, let's just seamlessly pull up to #2 and keep dumping.
2018-10-21 10:09:32

2018-10-21 10:09:32

What the heck, we're still dumping at a decent clip -- let's pull up to the third tank since the first two are full.
2018-10-21 10:09:40

It is sometime between these two photos where (if you were really pushing things) it was time to leave:
2018-10-21 10:09:44

2018-10-21 10:09:54

Actual arrive-to-leave time: 2 minutes, 22 seconds; 2500 gallons = dump rate 1,059gpm
Had you left 30 seconds sooner with 200 gallons left in the tank: 2300 gallons = dump rate 1,236gpm

Again, this is most critical when you have enough tankers and enough fill sites established that you always have someone pulling up ready to dump. Don't let a full tanker wait for an almost empty one.

Another way to do the math:
SK's leave-to-leave time was 9:50:56 -- 10:09:54 18 minutes, 58 seconds to deliver 2500 gallons = 131.85gpm (I suspect they were filling from a different, slightly further away fill site than Dayville).
Shave 30 seconds off the round trip time, deliver 200 gallons less due to not waiting till the last drop you deliver 124.6gpm

There were 11 tankers.
They were taking 2-1/2 minutes to dump.
If we forgo the last few hundred gallons from each to move them out in 2 minutes instead of 2-1/2 minutes, we can fit 1 more tanker at the dump site for every four.
11 tankers @ 131.85gpm = 1450gpm
13 tankers @ 124.6gpm = 1619gpm (and we're oh-so-close shoe horning in another tanker)

(Again these numbers a little low compared to what was actually being flowed because I based them on SK which I think was one of the half of tankers filling up further away and thus below the fleet average of 158gpm per tanker).
Time is fixed. We can vary how many tankers, how many fill sites, how fast they can fill and dump (over the 20+ life cycle of apparatus purchase and replacement)...we can't change the number of minutes.

2018-10-21 10:10:22

Attawaugan is back.

Since Moosup was getting ready to leave, they just smoothly pulled up to the front set of dump tanks.
2018-10-21 10:11:04

Not sure how long they took to dump, but in 2-1/2 minutes they were gone and Scotland was getting in position.

In the background I regret not getting a pic of Central Village's other ET and Plainfield's Service truck that were staged to respond to other incidents in town during the drill.
2018-10-21 10:13:40

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2018-10-21 10:14:32

2018-10-21 10:14:36

East Killingly is back and jockeying into the rear set of dump tanks.
2018-10-21 10:14:58

The money shot! I'm not used to some of the newer tankers and their timing -- a lot of the remote valves were being operated before I was ready with my camera!

Note the next five photos were taken in the same second showing the initial flow, a burst of turbulence, and then stabilizing:
2018-10-21 10:15:26

2018-10-21 10:15:26

2018-10-21 10:16:26

And East Killingly is done -- 30 seconds to get into position, 1:04 to dump 2500 gallons. 2018-10-21 10:16:30

Mortlake is back.
2018-10-21 10:17:12

Lisbon is back. And most of the state thinks they just show up to collect awards at parades ;) Lisbon's '95 Peterbilt was one (the?) first modern dump style Engine-Tanks in northeastern Connecticut, and it really took about 10 years to reach a critical mass before dump-style shuttles started to predominate over pump-off style shuttles. Every one of the trucks shuttling today were "Engine-Tanks" under our regions nomenclature since they have > 1000gpm pumps. Most of these trucks are also plumbed to pump off at > 1000gpm.
2018-10-21 10:17:36