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INTRODUCTION The fire service has evolved beyond just ib Fire suppression saving lives and protecting property. We tb Pre-incident planning and have also become the first line of defense , Fire fighter safety in protecting the environment. This new challenge comes with an expanding aware- California generates between 22-28 million ness of the cause and effect fires have on discarded and reusable tires per year. the environment. The fact that California is one of the largest producers of waste tires in the Tire fires exemplify this challenge. We country should not be surprising. We are, can look at tires as a potential threat to after all, the largest commuter state in the the environment the same way we look at Nation. California produces as many a railroad tank car, a truck on the high- discarded and reusable tires as Canada way, or an oil tanker off the coast- each and Great Britain, who annually produce filled with a hazardous substance. These, 24 and 23 million scrap tires respectively. too, are potential threats to our environ- ment. Each of these, when involved in a Nationally, the country discards around fire, could have disastrous effects on the 242 million tires annually. This figure is natural environment. based upon the number of replacement tires sold. That figure is added to the The difference between a tire fire and any number of scraped vehicles every year. Of of the above emergencies is that tire fires these 28%, or roughly 67,760,000 tires, are are static. Large tire piles do not move recycled as fuel, rubber modified asphalt, around. The fact that tires are basically a civil engineering projects, marketable petroleum based product places them in products, and other applications. The the same league as an oil tank fire. The remaining 174,240,000 tires, or 72%, are similarities here are appropriate. When a stockpiled annually. The national invento- tire reaches a certain stage of combustion, ry is estimated at 3 to 4 billion scrap tires. volumes of pyrolitic oil can be produced. This factor could turn your tire pile into a The problem with this glut of discarded running oil fire without the appropriate tires is that landfills generally will not diking to contain it. accept them. Not only do whole tires take up an inordinate amount of landfill space, This manual addresses tire storage and but they also have a tendency to float to tire fires in terms of the surface. The temporary solution to this issue is to shred the tires before land- 0 The scrap tire industry filling them. 0 Environmental impact 0 Fire prevention But is landfilling tires a solution? Not 0 Scientific evaluation when you consider the usefulness of this product. 1