Wednesday, March 19, 2008

SFD Barn Burning


In an earlier post I had a photo of the 1973 American LaFrance ladder truck when it arrives at the SFD. This photo taken about 10 years later shows the truck with the paint scheme of White over Red that had been adopted in the early eighties. On this day the truck is being used at a controlled burn/training session in which the barn in the background will be systematically burned to the ground. This done by using the natural forces of heat transfer in the building and the use of ventilation to ensure the building comes down inside it's own footprint,
or in other words the debris falls within the foundation of the structure.

The second photo shows the fire well under way with a master stream device in service to help maintain the spread of embers and to possibly cool the fire a little at the time to maintain control.

A friend of mine was on the scene the day this burn occurred and he assured me the building did indeed collapse in on itself successfully.

A reader of this BLOG sent me these photos and was able to tell me this was the last barn inside the city limits of Salisbury and was located in the general area of what is now Crosswind Apartments in the College Ave./Lincoln Ave. area.

It is not easy to get real structures to burn any more. There are plenty of derelict buildings out there but in order to be used for training they must meet certain guidelines for stability and safety and certain environmental requirements must be met as well.

1 comment:

TomCat said...

That looks like a fun one!