Teamwork and Pentair Technology Helped Defeat the Fire at Ground Zero

The destruction of the World Trade Towers on Sept. 11, 2001 was not just the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. It also ignited the nation’s longest-burning structural fire.

The fire at Ground Zero burned for five months, fed by a mountain of rubble that initially spanned 16 acres and soared over 100 feet above New York City’s ash-coated streets. Firefighters managed to contain the fire, but it continually defied their around-the-clock efforts to fully control it.

One reason was that seed of the fire sat seven stories below the wreckage, in the parking garage. During the weeks following the attacks, vehicles exploded multiple times a day, re-kindling the colossal pile of combustible wreckage above.

Another factor was the fuel from the planes that struck the towers. Nearly 50,000 gallons of jet fuel drenched the 220 floors of steel, concrete and office equipment that eventually collapsed. That supply of fuel, combined the trapped heat and adequate oxygen, helped sustain the fire.

Water alone could not defeat a fire of Ground Zero’s magnitude and dimension. So a few weeks after the disaster, the New York City Fire Department turned to Hypro® – one of Pentair’s Flow Technologies companies – to help battle the blaze. Five Hypro employees, who are also firefighters, were dispatched to Ground Zero, along with four Hypro FoamPro® proportioning systems.

The proportioners inject foam concentrate into the water used to fight fires. Foam can suppress fires up to four times faster than water alone because the tiny bubbles cover more area on a burning surface. The foam also clings to surfaces, allowing moisture to penetrate faster and deeper than water alone. Another plus: Using FoamPro requires three times less water than the traditional method.

“FoamPro penetrated and cooled the rubble,” said Alex Matson, one of the Hypro employees dispatched to Ground Zero. “And using less water lowered the danger of collapsing walls and flooding adjacent buildings.”

Matson and his co-workers helped New York firefighters incorporate the FoamPro proportioners into the city’s existing equipment, working shoulder-to-shoulder with firefighters for five days. At night, Hypro’s crew slept near the site in the back of a truck, brushing their teeth with water from a fire truck hose and guzzling hot coffee handed out by smiling, grateful volunteers.

FoamPro’s state-of-the-art proportioners made the transition to foam easy for firefighters at Ground Zero. They simply hooked up a proportioner to a fire truck’s discharge hose, and then pressed a button to indicate the level of fire they were fighting. The device’s on-demand settings enabled firefighters to automatically adjust the foam to suit the varying nature of the fire. The proportioner gets its name from its function – it adjusts the ratio of water to foam concentrate, depending on the demands of the fire. The type of material that’s burning and the immediate firefighting strategy are major factors in determining the thickness of the foam. For instance, responders protected adjacent sites with deep veils of foam, using less concentrate to extinguish burning steel, fuel and other materials. When Hypro’s crew departed, they left behind two proportioner units to help the New York City Fire Department continue the fire fight. Today, Hypro displays a third proportioner unit used at Ground Zero in the lobby of its headquarters in New Brighton. Minn., in honor of those who lost their lives in the attack.