To the Xtreme

With 240 people on hand, the annual Williams Fire & Hazard Control XTREME Industrial Fire & Hazard Response Training in June scored its second highest attendance in the event’s 20-year history.

Brent Gaspard, Tyco Fire Protection Products Marketing Manager, ranked the event as a great success.

“We had positive feedback from industry end users including fire response and safety personnel and fire protection engineering, from our distribution partners and from Williams’ personnel,” he said.

Aside from students across the United States, XTREME drew attendees from Canada South America and Mexico, Europe and Russia, from throughout the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

“Continuing a trend of the last 10 years, we also continue to see strong representation from both municipal and industrial fire response personnel responsible for incident response on incidents involving flammable liquids and gases,” Gaspard said.

This year’s program included well defined topics ranging from response logistics to equipment applications and incident command concerns. Each day of the four-day program was structured to reinforce the lessons and materials of the previous day with technical classroom content, diverse incident case studies, hands-on equipment training and practical live fire response exercises.

Live-fire demonstrations conducted at the Beaumont Emergency Services Training Complex (BEST) in Beaumont, TX, included a full surface blaze in a 42-foot-diameter storage tank prop extinguished using Williams’ Ambush system, a semi-fixed system that combines both Type II and Type III foam applications for large external floating roof storage tanks.

During a social gathering for the visiting attendees, Industrial Fire World publisher David White presented WH&HC business development manager Eric LaVergne with the Red Adair award. More than a quarter century ago, Adair granted IFW permission to present the annual award to a recipient who had made the greatest contribution to industrial fire fighting.

The climax of Adair’s career came in the 1990s, extinguishing 117 oil well fires in Kuwait ignited by Saddam Hussein’s troops fleeing the first Gulf war invasion.

“I really appreciate this honor,” LaVergne said.