The background to the above picture is from an actual response from our Grissom ARB Fire Department a few years ago.  There was a fuel truck on the bypass in Kokomo that had caught on fire, I don’t remember how, and the locals couldn’t put it out.  There were flames like 500 feet into the air.  They asked if the Air Force could help out.  Well, we have foam for aircraft fires and yeah, we got it out.  

So, I did some searching on line and here is the article from our Public Affairs office that was published on June 26, 2020.

Grissom FD extinguishes tanker fire

 

• Published June 26, 2020
• By Staff Sgt. Joshua Weaver
• 434th ARW Public Affairs

Grissom Air Reserve Base —  

There’s nothing like a 75-foot tornado of fire coming from a fuel tanker truck to make an incident commander look for mutual aid options.

That was the scenario June 19, when the Kokomo Fire Department came upon a tanker truck fire on U.S. 31 North in Kokomo, Indiana.

At approximately 10:45 p.m. that night a semi-trailer carrying gasoline caught fire when the trailer brakes locked up. The driver called 911 and Kokomo first responders arrived on scene to see the fire had spread from the brakes to the trailer filled with gasoline.

Kokomo’s incident commander then requested mutual aid from the Grissom Fire Department.

“Mutual aid was requested from Grissom due to our resources, including aircraft rescue firefighting vehicles with foam capability,” said John Ireland, Grissom fire chief.  (John Ireland has actually won the Fire Chief of the Year Award for the State of Indiana as a little bitty Air Reserve Base Fire Chief.  He was THAT good!  He has since retired.  He has forgotten more about fighting fires than many Fire Chiefs learn in their whole careers.)

Grissom responded to the request with six firefighters and three vehicles, Crash 3 and Tanker 10, both heavily equipped fire trucks designed to combat a variety of scenarios including an aircraft incident, and a command vehicle.

“The tanker was leaking fuel onto the roadway with streams of fire going in different directions on both sides of the tanker,” said Jason Cahill, Grissom firefighter. 

With Cahill and John Denham working the bumper and roof turrets Grissom was able to suppress both of the running fuel fires with a foam/water mixture.

“One of the challenges we faced was the location of the incident,” Cahill said. “We didn’t have access to a continuous water supply.”

Crash 3 made an extensive initial attack with 1,500 gallons mixed with the foam concentrate, while Tanker 10 came behind and resupplied Crash 3 with an additional 4,000 gallons of water.

Once all the water on site was used, a Howard County Water Tanker Task Force, established a water shuttle to help keep the Crash 3 stay on the attack.

With the running fuel lines extinguished, Crash 3 switched its attack to focus on the tanker trailer itself to extinguish the source of the fire.

“We were able to knock down the ‘seat’ of the fire in a relatively short period of time,” Cahill said.

With the fires knocked down, a waiting game began.

“We had to ensure that the foam blanket we put down was enough to contain fuel vapors from re-igniting from the heat that remained in the burned materials,” Cahill said.

Battling the blaze, Grissom used approximately 5,000 gallons of water with a mixture of 130 gallons of aqueous film forming foam.

After waiting until things cooled down, Grissom fire was released from the scene and it was turned over to the Indiana Environmental Protection Agency and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for proper decontamination and restoration of the area.

“Events like this are why mutual aid agreements are very important to each department,” Ireland said. “They allow federal fire departments such as Grissom to use resources and manning of installation personnel and equipment. Emergencies like this one are so large in scale that it takes multi-jurisdictional responses to mitigate them.”

Grissom’s fire department is manned 24-7 ensuring the safety and protection of the 434^th Air Refueling Wing’s 16 KC-135R Stratotankers.

Mutual aid agreements not only help to serve the local community but also help keep Grissom firefighters trained.

“Responding off-base exposes our members to different types of emergencies that may not routinely happen on the installation,” Cahill added.

“Given the fuel load of a Stratotanker, in the tragic event of a KC-135 fire, the tactics used on this semi-truck tanker fire are nearly identical to the tactics that would be used in combatting an aircraft fire,” he added.

The 434th ARW is the largest KC-135 unit in the Air Force Reserve Command. The Citizen Airmen from the Hoosier Wing routinely deploy around the world in support of the Air Force mission.

Stay connected with the 434th ARW on Facebook and Twitter.

And I know it’s gonna take up a lot of room, but we’ve gone this far, so let’s go a little further…here’s a bunch of pictures from the scene:

That’s the original picture from above.

Well, now that we’ve gone WAY off topic, let’s move on and 

I just got this one from Pop Smith and I think he’s throwing down the gauntlet to see if we can figure out what it means.  I got it pretty quickly.  I think the top line kind of gives it away, but regardless, it is awfully good!

And ANOTHER excellent one!

You’re scared?

Good!

It means you’re outside your comfort zone and that’s where you grow.

And here’s another great link from our own dear Stephanie:

AI robot named Sophia gives D’Youville University commencement speech

Just because I like it.

Yup…

This one is Stephen B and it is hilarious!

Gen Z daughter tries to explain what she does at family steel company — as boss dad can’t stop laughing in viral TikTok

Underwater Drone

YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!

Office Prank:

If you glue a dead wasp to your palm, you can smack your boss on the back of the head as hard as you want and act like you saved him.

Sometimes my work commute is a long one.

That is beautiful!

In the midst of a quarrel, the wife bitterly yells at her husband, “I was such a fool when I married you.”

Retorts her husband:” That’s so true. But I was in love and didn”t notice.”

A baby was born to a couple. When he was one, he could talk like an adult. When he was two, he could read anything. When he was three, he could do advanced calculus. When he was four, he could predict the future. 

One day, he made three predictions: “One year from today, I will die. Two years from today, my mother will die. Three years from today, my father will die.” 

Sure enough, a year later the young boy died. 

The father, getting the picture in a big way, loaded up is wife with a million dollars in life insurance. A year later she died. 

The father collected the million dollar insurance benefit, and, figuring he only had a year before his own death, went on a 364-day binge. Fast cars! Faster women! Exotic vacations! Flings with super models! 

His timing was perfect, for on the 364th day, he blew the last penny on a Blue Sapphire martini and an exotic dancer with a taste for overpriced champagne and sexy lingerie!!! 

At midnight, he toasted himself, “What a way to go,” and slipped off into what he assumed would be his *big* sleep.

To his amazement, he woke up the next morning… He thought he had cheated death! He was invincible! 

But then the exotic dancer with whom he’d spend the night broke the news… “Honey, better come quick, the pool boy’s dead.”

It sure does make it taste better to know their name, doesn’t it?  Vegan’s, you can’t make us guilty.

A noted sex therapist realized that people often lie about the frequency of their encounters, so he devised a test to tell for certain how often someone had sex.

To prove his theory, he filled up an auditorium with people, and went down the line asking each person to smile.

Using the size of the person’s smile, the therapist was able to guess accurately how often each person had sex.

The last man in line was grinning from ear to ear. “Twice a day,” the therapist guessed, but was surprised when the man said No.

“Once a day, then?” Again the answer was No. “

Twice a week?”

“No.” “Twice a month?”

“No

” When finally the doctor asked, “Once a year?”

. . . the man finally said Yes.

The therapist was angry that his theory hadn’t worked with this individual, and he asked the man, ” What the heck are you so happy about?”

The man answered, “TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT!”

How do you keep a bagel from getting away?

Put lox on it.

Scientists working round the clock, have decided to move the clock out of the way.

It amazes me how much exercise and extra fries sound alike.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have any fancy body wash.  We all had to use the same bar of soap our dad washed his butt with.  And if we we swore, we got our mouths washed out with the same bar of soap.

My husband suggested that we go to the pub separately to relive our first date. 

So he walked over to me at the bar and asked, “Hi gorgeous, can I buy you a drink?” 

I replied, “Get lost, I’m not falling for that again.”

My wife didn’t tell me that she was having a yard sale.  I went outside and fell into the hole.

Real Texas Bluebonnets

Well, we’ve got his opinion.

I just saw on the news that they’re suggesting that people scheck on the elderly.  I’m usually up by 6 or 6:30.  Bring donuts.

Back in my day, the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender yelled, “Last Call!”

Some people say they have a hamster on a wheel in their head, I have 4 squirrels fighting over an acorn.

I’ve got all that, plus the pain.  What does that mean?

Mnemonic

Thirty days has September,
April, June and November.
Unless a leap year is its fate,
February has twenty-eight.
All the rest have three days more,
excepting January,
which has six thousand,
one hundred and eighty-four.

Brian Bilston

The great news is I’ve made it to my golden years.
The very bad news is there is no gold.

And that is a wonderful place to end this one.  What a truly wonderful concept.  My dear and wonderful camper family…