[Letter from Alex Bradford to Gustavo E. Bonadio - September 14, 1944] Page: 1 of 4
This letter is part of the collection entitled: Rescuing Texas History, 2019 and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Private Collection of Mike Cochran.
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Lr. Gustave L * Badlo, B.S., September 14,194.
Now York City Fire Department,
New York, N.Y. - BWFF(caro) id
BWFF(rainey) env
.fier .r.Fnadio: Page 2-back oVf Condor ld
no ends
A bouquet to you for the fine article you wrote for tte
August issue of FIRE EGINXahING. tiitty glad tosee the chemical
side of fire-fighting being stressed. Good work!
You dealt with the 002, 0014 , Soda-Acid and Foam types
of extiruishers. Now, I wish to ask if you have ever run lab
tests on the tllowod stream" type using various potaoiin salt
solutions for oxygen-inhibiting effect?
As you know, two manifacturers make extinguisbers of
this type Fyr-Fyter's "INSTANT" which toee the "Katbaloy" solution,
and the Knight & Thomas extinguisher of similar type. have never
used the latter, but very Iailiar with the former which is widely
used in the oil country.
If you have used any lab tests with these loaded stream
solutions I would appreciate knowing vtat "superiority factor" you
got as an average. If 10 gilons of plain water is required to
extinguish a given fire, and 4 gallons of loaded stream solution
will do the job, then the "superiority factor" is 2.5.
They used the same term up at Ladison Forest Products
Laboratory When contrasting plain water (in Indian back puupsi
with various solut ions on forest duff fires, At Mad ion they
wore voting on Class A fres so they merely needed a good flmue
retardant. They prefaEtod manoammoniun phosphate which is fine
for this purpose,
We used the same solution overseas in tanks of crash trucks
for the Air F force. owever, for that purpose we preferred potassium
carbonate. 5e ran sane large outdoor tests on obsolete captured
planes, but no all laboratory tests where we could accurately
mnearure amounts used with &o watches under carefully controlled
conditions. Results of outdoor tests were encouraging enough to
justify use of these solutions in preference to straight water for
high-pressure fog on crash fires,
in using solutions in crash truck tanks our aims were:
(1) to reduce possibility of re-flash (nothing equal to foam for this);
and (2) to get the utmost fire-eztinguishing efficiency out of a given
gaflonage of water. In regard to the latter you understand that we
are not tied onto any hydrants in the ocabat areas,
It is likely that I will be going overseas again in the
very near future.
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Bradford, Alex. [Letter from Alex Bradford to Gustavo E. Bonadio - September 14, 1944], letter, September 14, 1944; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1479444/m1/1/?q=+date%3A1941-1945: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Private Collection of Mike Cochran.