School districts are showing increased interest in purchasing fire
suppression systems to assist in evacuating students, especially those with special needs, and suppliers are taking notice.
WRITTEN BY ART GISSENDANER A
Darlington County Schools bus in South Carolina was carrying 40 elementary school students in January 2019, when it was rear-ended at a railroad crossing and caught
fire. The bus driver was praised as a hero for getting the kids off the bus safely before it was engulfed in flames. Just days later, a fire started in the engine compart-
ment of a Broward County School District bus in Florida that was transporting 16 elementary students. News reports told of “intense flames and thick black smoke” destroying the front of the bus. The driver’s actions were described by one witness as “nothing short of heroic,” for evacuating all 16 student students safely. Then, on Feb. 5, a Greenville School District bus in
Pennsylvania caught fire just after elementary students had disembarked and entered the school building. The driver noticed smoke coming from underneath the bus just before the front end of the bus caught fire. According to one news report, a “mechanical issue” was to blame. These three incidents speak to several truths: Whether
by collision or mechanical failure, school bus fires are occurring too frequently. The incidents have once again proven the value of driver training and emergency evacu- ation drills, that buses do not have to be on the road for a fire to occur, and that school bus fires do spread rapidly. This time, the buses were operating general education
routes. Now, imagine the potential outcomes if these were special needs buses that transported students in wheelchairs with child safety restraint systems (CSRS).
The Technology Until recently, fire suppression systems were available
only for commercial vehicles and transit buses. While school districts have expressed an interest in the tech- nology, the systems were priced out of the range of most transportation department budgets. With some variations, most suppression systems are
heat-sensitive devices mounted in the engine compart- ment or wheel wells, the two respective locations on a bus most frequently identified as flashpoints for fires. The battery is another location where fires may start. For example, Fogmaker North America’s engine fire
suppression system is designed to detect a fire in the engine compartment and suppress it. “Our system is a
high-pressure water mist system that deploys for 40 to 120 seconds, depending on the size of the area we are trying to cover within a vehicle,” said Kent Tyler, the company’s executive vice president. “In addition to wa- ter, we utilize environmentally friendly, nontoxic AFFF foam. The system is designed to put out the fire initially. It then cools the engine compartment, and the foam coats the area, to prevent a reflash from occurring.” Tyler added that another important feature of the
Fogmaker system is that it does not need electricity to deploy. “It doesn’t matter if the bus is in the bus barn and it’s 2 a.m.,” Tyler said. “If our system detects any type of thermal event that may have been smoldering during the day, it will deploy. We also offer a display panel that lets the driver know the system is armed and ready to go.” Tyler acknowledged that he has tracked growing in-
terest in fire suppression systems by school districts and private contractors. He explained that, three to four years ago, school districts began requesting more information on the Fogmaker system. He said the interest peaked in 2016, when National Express Corp., the parent compa- ny of Durham School Services, approached Fogmaker about including its system on all new buses purchased throughout North America. “That sparked a tremendous amount of interest,” Tyler said. Tyler explained that at about the same time, interest
in fire suppression systems on school buses was also stoked by the release of a November 2016 study that was conducted by the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center for the U.S. Department of Transporta- tion, on the severity and frequency of motorcoach and school bus fires. According to key findings in the report, “Motorcoach & School Bus Fire Safety Analysis,” school bus fires occur more frequently than motorcoach fires, with 68 percent of the fires occurring in the “engine compartment, run- ning gear and wheel areas.” The report also found that the most frequent con-
tributing factor was mechanical failure, or malfunction followed by electrical failure. The report acknowledged that bus fires spread quickly. The study also recommends that automatic failure-warning systems, plus fire detec- tion and suppression systems, be included as standard
www.stnonline.com 33
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76
