More on the manifold explosion from New Jersey
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See previous coverage and safety bulletin
Last Thursday we ran a safety bulletin and a series of pictures that have been emailed around from an incident that occurred at a fire on March 28. There was not a lot of information with pictures that show a rather significant failure of a manifold or “street hydrant” other than it had happened in New Jersey.
We have since learned it was in Lambertville in Hunterdon County. While we have not yet received a response to an email sent to Lambertville’s chief, a neighboring chief, who had firefighters witness the event, gives us a few more details.
Here is the information from Chief Bradley Patkochis, Quakertown FD:
The manifold explosion occurred right after a water tender was completed being filled. Its my understanding that a couple different things could have come into play here..1)a structural issue on the manifold 2)an improperly functioning relief valve 3)a combo of both.
The water hammer theory does not really play out as it was reported that the pumper was not in gear as the static pressure from the hydrant was 80 pounds and our tender fill SOG is 50 pounds. These were intial reports from my crew who was doing a station cover and were on site to witness the explosion.
The device has been sent back to Snap-tite for testing. A couple different lessons we have put out to our volunteers since the issue 1) test and inspect all your manifolds to ensure the don’t have cracks 2)make sure the relief valve activates 3)place all manifolds in compartments (the one in question was secured to the tailboard) 4)wear PPE while conducting tender fills.
