Firefighters ‘adapt’ to situation Published Jan. 23, 2004 By Capt. Carrie Clear 447th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs BAGHDAD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq (AFPN) -- Necessity is said to be the mother of invention. Two firefighters here have taken this old saying to heart and invented an adapter to increase their capacity to fight fires.Staff Sgt. Clinton Saul, of the 447th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron fire department, and Army Spc. James Michaels, of the 369th Engineering Detachment (fire department), came together after a large fire in one of the hangars here in November to solve the problem of refilling water distribution tankers.“We cannibalized adapters we already had here to make the adapter we needed,” Sergeant Saul said. What they came up with was a four-inch double female adapter for the hard suction hoses used by the water tankers. Fire trucks here can go through 3,000 gallons of water in one to two minutes, Sergeant Saul said. “We have two 6,000 gallon tankers, so we can run out of water in as little as 15 minutes,” he said. But the speed in which the water is used was not the only problem they faced. “It took me more than an hour to refill one tanker for the Hangar 3 fire,” Specialist Michaels said. There are about 20 water tankers assigned to the various engineering battalions here. With mutual aid agreements now in place, the fire department can call on the engineering battalions to deliver water to a fire, instead of driving their tankers to get water. Once the extra tankers arrive at the site, the adapter will connect the two tanker trucks and water will be pumped into the fire department tankers to be held until the fire trucks need it.While they have not had a large enough fire to use the new system, they have tested it and are pleased with the results. “Now we shouldn’t have to shut down for any reason,” Specialist Michaels said. “It’s a constant re-supply system.”