Dubai: Less than three weeks after a massive fire spread through several floors of the Address Downtown Dubai, a UAE company says it has come up with a tool that will revolutionise firefighting in the country.
Concorde-Corodex Group that demonstrated the US-made PyroLance at this week’s Intersec 2016 - the region’s largest fire safety exhibition - says the device is being tested by fire experts and civil defence teams throughout the UAE.
A handset that can propel an ultra-high pressure stream of water or foam through most materials including brick, marble, concrete and even steel plate, the PyroLance system helps firefighters cool burning structures through hard barriers even when they are a distance away from the hazard zone themselves.
Game-changer
“It’s a game-changer, especially in this part of the world where risks of fire often run so high,” says Mahmoud Awad, managing director of the Concorde-Corodex Group that is the first to distribute and supply the instrument in the UAE, Oman and Qatar. “The system will have a huge impact on firefighters’ ability to control fires in enclosed spaces - which are notoriously dangerous and difficult to extinguish - while keeping them out of harm’s way,” he says. The product has been successfully used in the USA where the Navy is said to use it to control high heat fires in confined spaces in submarines or ships before entering the vessel.
“The way it works is that it lets firefighters control blazes using very small volumes of water and garnate that cuts through steel and other materials in high-pressure water jets before cooling the burning surface by bringing down temperatures from 1,000 degrees Celsius to about 100 degrees in no time," says Mohanned Awad, the company’s director of business and product development.
"This makes it a highly efficient method of firefighting, reducing not just manpower requirements, water consumption but more importantly collateral destruction,” he added.
“PyroLance is already in demand in the region’s aviation and marine industries where companies often have to tackle container fires, but it’s only now that we are introducing it to civil defences and other commercial entities in the country, hopefully making homes and businesses much safer,” he says.
Four demos of the product were held on each day of the Intersec exhibition between January 17 and 19 at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre where a flammable liquid fire in a compartment through a 10mm steel barrier was controlled using water and firefighting foam.
PyroLance Piercing time
6mm aluminum: 10 seconds
Brick wall: 30 seconds
19mm double plywood: 30 seconds
Concrete block: 35 seconds
19mm plate steel: 55 seconds
