Required hydrocarbon "pit" fires

Dear Congressman,

I am sure that you read the title of today's blog and thought to yourself: "what has Rich been smoking now?".

To reassure you, absolutely nothing, unlike yourself and that nasty chain smoking habit we would all like to see you end before it ends you.

but I digress....

Here at the airport our Fire Department, known as ARFF (Aircraft Rescue & Fire Fighting), is required at least once a year to train at our on-site simulator in a "live fire" equivalent exercise. I was fortunate enough in 2007 to witness one of these drills by ARFF as part of our on-going management training. Though standing a good 200 yards from the burning aircraft simulator while the exercise was in progress, I could still feel the heat coming off of it just as if I was standing right next to a bonfire. The fire pit is located close to our central north-south runway, so it was quite amusing to watch taxing aircraft go by with a face glued to every window as a raging fire was engulfing the training pit.

As part of this exercise, the assistant fire chief told us an interesting story. First, when the pit was first designed and training began with it last decade, they used a training fuel that burned hotter than but with the same consistency of "Jet A". This proved to be problematic in two areas.

The first was a functional area. When the department engaged in the drill wearing their fire suits, everything was going to plan in terms of the design of the practice session, until the heat of the fire melted their radios. Previous training fuels had not burned this hot, so while they were performing the sweep of the simulator they lost communications with the fire chief because their radios literally melted to the side of their fire suits.

The second proved to be political. The fuel that was being used at the time had a tendency to form thick black smoke that on a windless day would form a funnel straight up into the sky. It appears one of the first times this fuel was used was on Earth Day, right as the mayor of Cincinnati was giving a press conference from the top of the Carew Tower . As they filmed the mayor extolling the strides Cincinnati was taking to becoming a greener city, a large flume of black polluting smoke was rising from the airport over her shoulder, giving a nice visual to all the local networks.

Needless to say, now we notify the City of Cincinnati the day before we perform any live fire exercises. I only bring this up because next week, if you travel through CVG, don't be surprised if you see black smoke coming from the airport as the annual required drills are performed.