This blog is about me (Tim Benson) and my time spent on the Africa Mercy working as a volunteer for the organisation Mercy Ships in West Africa. Everything here, however, is my personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. Opinions, conclusions and other information expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Mercy Ships. For information on how to support me please click here.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Fire Drill Training

Well First off I am going to make an apology for my lack of blogging well that is if there is anyone still checking this almost dormant blog I am apologising to you.

Thursday last week we had a fire drill here on the ship. Now that is not at all an uncommon thing as we generally have a drill every fortnight (or 2 weeks for those who don't know what that means). This drill however was different because A. it was in the morning and most of our drills are in the afternoon, and B. we didn't simulate a fire instead those of us on the fire teams got to have a go at using some of our special equipment that we have heard and talked about but never used.

Some of the equipment we tested includes the foam dispensing nozzle and the container penetrating nozzle, as seen below. The foam nozzle is very good for laying down a blanket over the fire and suffocating it out and the container penetrating nozzle as the name suggests is great for penetrating through the side of a shipping container or even a thin wall in the ship and putting out the fire without having to open the door to the space. After we had tested and learnt how to use both the nozzles we did a test that no one was sure would work we tried pumping foam liquid through the container penetrating nozzle to see if it would be a possibility in a real situation with great success.

Foam dispensing nozzle
Container penetrating nozzleShooting the foam dispensing nozzle

Using a sledge hammer to poke the nozzle through a practice wall
How the nozzle works once its gone through the wall
Testing if the penetrating nozzle works with foam (success!)
Shooting foam over the side of the ship into the wind.