Jan Waals, Director of the Joint Fire Brigade Rotterdam
By: Kees Kappetijn, Kappetijn Safety Specialists
For more than a quarter of a century, the Joint Fire Brigade Rotterdam has watched over the world’s second largest port and industrial area.
The organisation is unique in its kind: a specialised industrial fire brigade based on public-private partnership.
The partnership of industry and government ensures not only operational capability and knowledge for industrial incident response, but also for basic firefighting in the public domain in the port area.
In recent years, the special force has invested heavily in innovation.
Director Jan Waals, soon to retire, considers the innovations and safety gains his organisation has brought to Rotterdam’s dynamic port area.
For more than 11 years, Jan Waals led the Rotterdam Joint Fire Brigade.
Under his leadership, the force developed into a powerful and specialised fire brigade organisation that is firmly anchored administratively within the cooperating stakeholders: the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Safety Region, Rotterdam municipality and a cooperation of companies with a high risk profile.
These parties were pioneers in 1998 when they took the bold initiative to join forces and establish a public-private fire brigade.
This led, both for the Netherlands and internationally, to a unique organisational model.
Public-privately organised, under one joint board, majority budgeted from industry, with a public legal status.
The power of the collective
A key reason for the establishment of the Joint Fire Brigade was to ensure the strength, quality and continuity of industrial fire-fighting services in the dynamic Rotterdam port and industrial area.
Dozens of high-risk companies in (petro)chemicals and tank storage each had their own company fire brigade until 1998.
Sometimes sizeable organisations with lots of equipment and personnel, but with varying levels of quality and continuity.
This ‘overkill’ of equipment was very inefficient and ineffective, because each company prepared itself for scenarios that hardly ever occurred.
Moreover, large structural investments were needed per company to keep knowledge, skills and the state of specialised fire-fighting equipment up to date.
This could be done more efficiently, local authorities and industry decided.
Together, they laid the foundations for a ‘bold model’.
One collective industrial fire brigade organisation for the entire Rotterdam port area, with guaranteed strength and fast turnout time, which could cover the realistic incident scenarios of all high-risk companies in accordance with the requirements set by the authorities.
Because the government also participates in the partnership, the Joint Fire Brigade also provides basic fire-fighting services in the public domain (two urban residential areas, the motorways and railways with tunnels and bridges, port basins and non-designated industries in the port area).
The industrial partners, over 60 companies in total, united in a cooperation called ‘CIBUA’.
Some of these are companies with a statutory company fire brigade designation, such as refineries, tank storage terminals and container companies, and some are companies that have joined voluntarily.
From CIBUA, the industry delegates board members to the joint public authorities-industry board committee.
There, the interests of all stakeholders are discussed and weighed and decisions are taken on the operation of the joint corps.
The ‘power of the collective’ organised by the partners with the Joint Fire Brigade, GB for short, serves several interests.
First, those of the companies, which, by joining the collective company fire brigade, can cover the incident risks the public authorities require them to cover.
Second, the interests of the public authorities, who can rely om a powerful and well-equipped fire brigade organisation for incident risks in the public domain.
And thirdly, the interests of Port of Rotterdam as area manager, benefitting from fast and effective incident response to minimise the effects of calamities for the continuity of logistical processes in the port area.
Moreover, with its knowledge and expertise, the GB contributes to a safe business climate for companies in general.
And all this at acceptable shared costs, thanks to joint investments in management and operation of accommodation, equipment, personnel, education, training and exercise.
The Joint Fire Brigade in 2024
Anno 2024, the Joint Fire Service ‘stands’ firmly, with eight operational fire stations, two of which are in the urban areas of Hoogvliet and Rozenburg and six spread across the vast port and industrial area.
The total staff strength is about 320, including 190 incident responders on professional duty, 60 voluntary fire fighters in Hoogvliet and Rozenburg and 12 professionals at the logistics centre, which is combined with the ‘headquarters’.
It also houses the staff of about 55, who are involved in preparation, management, operations and company relationship management.
Rapid response and operational power are the key words of the Joint Fire Brigade’s operational organisation.
One basic fire engine and an industrial foam tender are stationed at each of the six fire stations in the industrial area for this purpose.
In addition, each of the stations has an operational specialisation.
The core task of the GB is industrial fire and incident response, but the organisation also has specialist teams for marine firefighting, high-altitude rescue and hazardous materials incident response.
In addition to the ‘basic equipment’ and the aforementioned specialisms, the corps has a separate ‘Collective Fire Fighting Pool’ with ‘heavy duty equipment’ for large-scale tank fire and tank pit fire scenarios.
The pool consists of two large-capacity pumps, two foam boosters, transport hose lines, two mobile fire monitors and six trailers with 10,000 litres of foam-forming agent each.
The two heavy-duty fire monitors enable foam deployment with a capacity of up to 40,000 litres per minute over a distance of 150 metres.
Four remotely controlled unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) were acquired for tank pit firefighting.
The Collective Fire Fighting Pool (CBP) is a separate arrangement within the GB partnership, jointly funded by 23 member companies with the highest company fire-fighting designation (tank and tank pit fire).
Innovations
The aforementioned Collective Fire Fighting Pool is one of the innovations that came about in recent years under Jan Waals’ leadership.
As in the overall organisation of the GB, efficiency was also a key ‘driver’ for the tank and tank pit firefighting specialisation.
Tank and pit fires could already be tackled with special high-volume equipment, but the new CBP is even safer for operating firefighting personnel due to remotely controlled robot equipment.
Jan Waals: “In 2016, the PGS-29 directive, based on the Seveso regulations, was updated and supplemented in the Netherlands.
The directive requires tank storage companies to have a firefighting system that allows them to effectively control and fight tank pit fires.
Given the large number of tank terminals and chemical companies with tank storage in our region, it would require immense investments if every company with this risk profile had to invest individually in a stationary extinguishing system based on the largest possible fire scenario.
As tank and tank pit fires are extremely rare in the industry, this would be a huge waste of capital.
With this in mind, we developed a proposal for a collective mobile solution, guaranteed to be available to all companies with tank storage at the time of need.
The conditions, rapid response and sufficient operational power, we can fulfil for all those companies with our ready and trained organisation, with fire stations throughout the operating area’.”
After due deliberation, the competent authority of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Safety Region agreed to this mobile solution.
The system was designed and built from 2020 and was tested and officially commissioned in the summer of 2022.
Waals: “With the collective equipment pool, funded by 23 companies with a high risk profile for tank (well) fires, we have set a new standard for this specialist industrial firefighting task.
The main trigger was the regulations for tank pit fires, but we also used this project to redefine our existing collective system for tank fires.
That heavy extinguishing system was logistically quite complex and took a lot of time to deploy.
Now we have one combined collective equipment pool, with components that can be used for both tank pit and tank fire fighting.
Thanks to a sophisticated logistics concept, the system can be deployed significantly faster.
The new equipment pool is also an innovation in safety, due to the four remotely controlled monitors.
Those machines, each with a foam extinguishing capacity of 4,000 litres per minute, make it possible to fight a tank pit fire without exposing firefighters to the dangerous radiation heat in the vicinity of the tank pit.”
Digital Reconnaissance
Another key innovation of the Joint Fire Service is the Digital Reconnaissance Team, which was set up together with the public fire brigade of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Safety Region.
The team has a reconnaissance and firefighting robot and various types of drones, including models that can fly inside buildings and even operate underwater in ports and waterways.
“This team has great added value for us in imaging and decision-making around complicated incidents,” explains Jan Waals.
“There are many large and complex buildings and installations in our catchment area, which pose a challenge if we want to get a quick ‘image’ of the scope and development of the incident, as well as special risks and hazards.
With these remotely operated camera and sensor instruments we have a digital toolbox at our disposal to collect all the ‘operational imaging’ we need.
And this is also in the interest of the safety of the firefighters deployed, says Waals, who refers to an incident in Vlaardingen in 2019, in which a squad of firefighters became disoriented in a burning warehouse.
“Thanks to the thermal camera of the deployed drone, the team could be located and safely piloted out.
This is how technology can help save lives.”
And drone innovations continue.
Most recently the GB set up trials testing compact ‘Smart balls’ with small cameras and sensors that can be thrown into burning buildings and ‘wing drones’ with longer flight time and action radius.
These can operate autonomously from three fixed docking stations in the port and industrial area during incidents, in order to provide relevant information and aerial images to the fire units on their way to the incident.
The technical and legal framework conditions for this autonomous drone deployment are currently being worked out.
GB as a PPP: keys to success
Looking back on the period during which he led the Joint Fire Service, Jan Waals says he will bid farewell as a proud man when he retires in June.
The organisation and finances are in order after an internal reorganisation of operations and the specialised force, 26 years after its establishment, stands firmly.
With that, the Joint Fire Brigade proves that public-private industrial firefighting works, if you know how to organise it properly.
But what are the keys to that success?
Governance and relationship management
Waals: “First of all, you have to get the governance of the participating stakeholders right and invest in relationship management with the member companies that are our ‘customers’.
But also a good relationship with industrial business umbrella organisations, such as The Royal Association of the Dutch Chemical Industry (VNCI) and the Rotterdam business platform Deltalinqs, is important.
We have continuously invested in that relationship management since our establishment in 1998, with the jointly felt safety interests and goals as our starting point.
Short lines of communication with the principals of authorities and industry are vital, because it is at that administrative level that decisions are taken on the services the organisation performs for private and public partners.
For example, we need to be able to properly explain the usefulness of any investment to stakeholders.
Like the investments in the drone team, the Collective Fire Fighting Pool, Team High Rescue and other specialisms.
This also applies to the forthcoming replacement of our fire engines and industrial foam tenders with new future-proof types, tailored to the service area and area risk profile.
Large sums of money are involved. Our customers naturally want to know what they get in return.
We explain this from our expertise for industrial incident management, also looking at future risks and scenarios.
Relationship with competent authority
And just as important as the relationship with industrial customers, is the relationship with public stakeholders: the safety region and city hall.
Because we also provide an important part of public firefighting services in urban areas and on the vital traffic arteries around the Rotterdam port area.
On these infrastructures the interests of government and industry also join, because a major calamity on the motorway or in one of the three traffic tunnels in our service area can have major consequences for the logistics in the port area.
In addition, any incident response takes place under the responsibility of the security region; they make the decisions.
That should not be in question.
Office and fire stations: always dynamic
During Jan Waals’ management period, the Joint Fire Brigade moved to a new headquarters with logistics centre in Europoort and also opened its sixth industrial fire station in the newest part of the Rotterdam port area, the Second Maasvlakte.
Another station with a special story, as it was here that the Joint Fire Brigade established a cooperation with the nautical rescue service KNRM, due to the large number of water sporters (kite surfers) along the coast of this youngest part of the Netherlands.
ProRail: a special partner
Equally special is the cooperation between the Joint Fire Brigade and rail operator ProRail in the GB’s largest operational station, the Don Berghuijskazerne.
The Joint Fire Brigade is also the collective company fire brigade for the six port yards operated by ProRail in the area, where large quantities of hazardous materials are shunted.
This makes ProRail the GB’s biggest partner.
But ProRail also has its own technical emergency response organisation, including a hazmat team.
Housing both organisations in one building promotes cooperation.
Jan Waals: “Where possible, we look for synergy to provide the best possible firefighting service to all our ‘customers’, both in industry and in the public domain.
Some customers themselves have additional requirements for this.
For instance, ProRail, with the GB’s operational support and insights, developed the temporary availability of a fire-fighting train.
And for firefighting on higher embankments of its port yards, rail operator ProRail asked for a fire engine with a fire-fighting arm that enables foam deployment at height.
Two of the ten new industrial vehicle fire engines we will commission over the next six years will therefore be fitted with a fire-fighting arm with a height of 23 metres and a throw length of 64 metres.
Of course, these vehicles can also be used for firefighting in high installations at our other customers.
In our joint public-private organisation synergy and cost-effectiveness are key, ensuring safety and adequate incident response in the port and industrial area and adjacent public areas.
All Joint Fire Service partners recognise this shared interest.
The success of the Joint Fire Service? Responsible together, organised together, governed together, paid together.