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They only burn Barns in Texas

At 30 sec you can see a snorkle truck on the right side squirting water a surprisingly long distance.
 
Huge fires like this in apartment buildings under construction seem to be happening quite regularly. With all the open wood framing and not having the drywall in place makes a great tinderbox, once a fire starts they are very hard to stop.
 
At what point do you just let it burn?
Typically, fire departments are required to continue efforts to extinguish no matter what. At a certain point, their efforts do just turn to controlling the fire to limit or eliminate spread. It all depends on risk of fire spread, threats to life safety, and ultimately property protection.
 
We call letting it burn "protecting the exposures"

The general rules are keep the firefights safe, keep the public safe, keep the fire to the room of origin, the building of origin, or the block of origin depending on the intensity of the fire, and resources available.

if the building was 200x100 and 4 stories tall the need fire flow on scene calculation is length x width divided by 3 times the number of stories

200x100/3 x 4 = 26,000 gallons per minutes applied at the base of the flame for one minute to extinguish the fire, the Fire Chief said on arrival if he had 12000 gallons per minute and could apply it may have been contained to one building
 
26,000 gallons per minute
So how much water does a modern pumper put out? I guess it also depends on the supply at the hydrant.
 
26,000 gallons per minute
So how much water does a modern pumper put out? I guess it also depends on the supply at the hydrant.
The minimum pump capacity according to the standards is 1000 GPM, a large majority of new pumpers purchased these days are actually about 1500 GPM. All the new pumpers being purchased by FDNY are 2000 GPM and they just purchased 1 5500 GPM "super pumper". 5500 GPM is the largest I've seen in a truck and even then finding a water supply capable of providing that much water is a challenge in many areas.
 
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