TetraKO is mixed into a 300-gallon brush truck at a .4% solution by a fire department in rural Texas. Shortly thereafter, Assistant Fire Chief Keith Kuzniarek is called to the scene of a seven to 10-acre grass fire with flames that are about 1-2 feet tall. While a 2,000-gallon tanker is standing by, Kuzniarek applies TetraKO using the lowest nozzle setting, at five gallons per minute flow, and a semi fog pattern. He circles the fire and uses a direct attack on the perimeter flames. The fire is contained and extinguished with 100 - 150 gallons of mixed solution, and the 2,000-gallon tanker is not needed.
I’ve been in the fire service since I was 18, so that’s 28 years. I am with the Reagan Volunteer Fire Department, and have been a member for about 10 years. A short time ago, Doug Ruth and his team from EarthClean came out and batch mixed our 300-gallon brush truck, and asked us to try it out and to let them know how it worked.
Last week, we put TetraKO to the test on two separate fires. First, we had a seven to10-acre grass fire. I used TetraKO on the lowest nozzle setting that I could, which was five gpm, and the nozzle was set on a semi fog pattern.
I drove around the perimeter of the fire – I made a circle around the entire fire and used a direct attack on the flames and foliage around its edges. The flames were about 1-2 feet tall. I hit the flames very lightly with TetraKO and it knocked them out, and I mean it knocked out the fire! I hit it and it was out! It smoked a little bit and that was the end.
A lot of times you hit a fire with plain water or foam and it will reignite, but this one didn’t. We came back later to take another look, to see if we needed to hit it again, but it was out. It didn’t reflare or rekindle.
We used maybe 100 to 150 gallons of TetraKO mixed solution to extinguish the entire fire. And that’s it. We had our tanker there, but we never used it. We really didn’t have any mop up, except to hit a couple of cow patties that were smoldering in the middle of the field!
Some of the other guys, like our driver, didn’t know much about TetraKO. He asked me, ‘What did you have in that tank?’ and, I told him, ‘TetraKO’. He was amazed because he thought I used a heavy percentage of foam or something else on the fire to knock it down. He and I have never seen anything like it. TetraKO worked awesomely for us.
- Keith Kuzniarek, Assistant Fire Chief, Reagan Volunteer Fire Department