A dozen public safety officers from around the state were at Harbor Patrol headquarters in Newport Beach for a weeklong training program on fighting fires on the water.

Agencies that sent personnel to the training program were the California Department of Fish and Game, the Los Angeles Fire Department, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, the Sacramento Police Department and the Los Angeles County Lake Lifeguards. Harbor Patrol is one of only two agencies in California to provide training in marine firefighting tactics.

Fighting fire on the water is a difficult task, with the boat carrying the firefighters and the boat on fire both moving at the same time and independently of each other. Each is influenced by wind, tide, current and other factors. Playing a heavy stream of water on the boat on fire is likely to cause the boat to move.

The students learned how to approach a fire and how to attack a fire from a moving platform. One of the final exercises in the program was to have the students put out fires on a boat in Newport Beach Harbor. The fires were set in drums aboard an 18-foot boat provided to the program by the state.

The exercise was carried out by a fleet that included a safety boat, a boat carrying the crew that set the fire and pumped water out of the target craft as needed and a boat carrying two students and an instructor.

The students were taught to attack the fire with a shower of water sprayed from a fire hose and through fog rod, a special nozzle that is set at an angle and designed to smother burning liquids.  By setting the fires in drums aboard the boat, no pollutants entered the water and the boat could be used for repeated fire training exercises.