It was a full test of capabilities as Altona/Rhineland Emergency Services (ARES) partnered with Imperial Oil for a live training exercise at the tank farm near Gretna last week.
Fire Chief Greg Zimmerman explained, they ran through a fuel tank over-fill scenario in real-time.
"Imperial Oil employees notified everybody at the company and had that line shut down so it would stop over-filling. They called 9-1-1 which paged out to ARES and we responded."
Once on-scene, fire fighters were charged with laying a blanket of compressed foam over the spilled fuel to prevent vapors from escaping.
"When you lay down a vapor suppression blanket, you can shut your lines down but then you wait for what we call the quarter-life of the foam, and you re-apply some more foam. So, you're maintaining a layer all the top until they could pump out the fuel and move it to another container," added Zimmerman.
Overall, Zimmerman is impressed with how the scenario played out, particularly when it came to working together with the Imperial Oil staff.
"Normally, when you do big exercises, one of the common problems is communications," he said. "We discovered that working with Imperial Oil, there were no communications problems. For the first time that we exercised together, the communications and the interactions between us were absolutely perfect. You couldn't ask for anything better."
The biggest test of the day, however, according to Zimmerman, was to see if the hydrant system could support the effort and supply enough water.
"They have the fire pond in the Shell yard, and the pumps are there. They pump water all the way through to Enbridge. Everything worked out the way it was supposed to."
One area that could be improved upon, albeit small, is getting the fire department's supply lines out faster.
"Using foam is kind of new for this department so we sort of had to walk through it," noted Zimmerman, "but we got everything laid out and hook up in fairly good time."
