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Bollard design for trails and fire protection Page 6 of 8 Apparatus Bumper Impacts Collapsible Bollard Takedown:5 seconds Apparatus Bumper Impacts Collapsible Bollard •Takedown:5 seconds •Apparatus impacts two-three bollards simultaneously; •Collapses bollards(sheers retention inserts,replaceable following event) •Bollards remain in place If the code-critical average set up time is to be two minutes,then access across-barrier represents a wide range of conservatively-calculated effort of 5-75 seconds.Bollard design therefore is a relevant variable in a system committed to fire mitigation. However,as is true of any system,there are contingent time-related factors,which need to be considered by the trail designer,fire protection engineer,or AHJ. •Keys can be misplaced during the rush to set up.This is not as I ikely when using the much larger hydrant wrench,which is standard equipment for first responders.Misplaced keys will be more common when cooperating fire crews arrive from several stations and particularly those from outside the jurisdiction of the local fire station(see last item in this series). •Infrequently opened locks can rust or be contaminated with trail or other debris unless they meet the ASTI-standards of NFPA 730—Guide for Physical Security. •Inclement weather conditions(snow,rain,sand,debris,mud,or flood)can make funding and unlocking locks a difficult task. •In the event of a lock failure,for any of the foregoing reasons,the remaining option is the bolt-cutters—usually a two-person task'Under these circumstances,all bets for efficient access are off. These contingencies lend themselves to choice of either the hydrant wrench collapsible design or the knock-over design instead of designs using keys and padlocks.(The knock-over collapsible design is readily repaired on site following the incident.) In one interview with a seasoned fire fighter from the Northeast with whom we described these design differences,he exclaimed,"'the winter snows made it almost impossible to find and unlock the bollards.How easy it would have been to just knock them over and drive straight through!" Conclusion Firefighting in the city and even in a small country town can seem almost benign in their relative straightforward response to local fires compared to situations where two or more fire departments located miles apart from each other cooperatively respond to rural trail fires or wildland urban interface fires. As these rather loosely configured"fire-fighting systems"grow in size and diversity,the task of the trail designer,fire prevention engineer,and authority having code jurisdiction(AHJ)"complexifies."After all,our fire codes do not specify what kind of bollard design—a performance- design-measure-issue—is required,only that a bollard is necessary!And judging by the hundreds of different local design decisions made by Al-Us and published on the Internet and accessible from a Google search,the evidence seems clear:a flip of the coin has been sufficient!We have added a new performance design measure element to assist in simplifying the mix of considerations by the AM.Happy trekking! Charles G Oakes,PhD,is a security consultant for Blue Ember Technologies,LLC~A detailed discussion of bollard designs is found at www.Ma3dForceBollards.com. Print Friendly ■�7i�iil�l -- http://www.americantrails.org/resources/trailheadA3dlard-oakes-fire-protection.html 10/18/2017