ATHABASCA – A brief conversation after the Slave Lake fire in 2013 has since blossomed into an internationally patented product that a local business has been using to help fight forest fires.
“When the fires happened, my partner felt there had to be a better way to fight fires, so we started some testing,” said Trident Pumps chief operating officer Rick Baksza. “Fast forward to 2019 and we had an American patent, and in 2020 we opened our doors here.”
Baksza appeared before Athabasca County councillors during their Dec. 10 council meeting to showcase his company’s product, which takes the pump strength of a large fire truck and shrinks it down until it fits on the back of a six-wheel all-terrain vehicle (ATV).
“With forestry, there’s a big window of what they’re using — they’ll use backpack pumps between 50 and 100 gallons a minute, all the way up to five thousand gallon a minute systems,” said Baksza.
“What we’ve done is make that gap a whole lot smaller, and it allows us to be rapidly deployable.”
Baksza focused on Trident’s strengths when he talked to councillors — the systems are comfortable operating in a variety of terrains, and can run on an incline or uneven footing, scenarios traditional systems struggle with.
“If the Trident solution was owned by the County at the time the Jackfish Lake fire was detected, we are confident the fire would have been extinguished in days,” said Baksza.
“Selfishly, my goal would be to have one here. When the county has an emergency, you can throw whatever you can in terms of equipment at the fire, but then you have to do the whole dance to get it paid back. I would love to have one available so if you have another of those fires, you can say, ‘Hey, we want one.’”
At first glance, Trident’s machines don’t seem revolutionary — the idea to put a big pump on a smaller, more mobile machine just seems like common sense. The trick, according to Baksza, was finding a way to mimic the power of a larger diesel engine on a smaller machine.
“In every other situation than ours, you need that big, rotating mass of a diesel engine, so a lower rotations per minute (RPM) and a higher torque,” said Baksza, who said the higher torque is what pushes the water through the hoses.
“Our patent shifts that, and allows us to have an engine that has a high RPM, between six and eight thousand, and when the RPM is high, convert that into torque.”
In Baksza’s view, getting a device into the hands of the county would help Athabasca with mutual aid scenarios, and could quickly turn a profit, as demonstrated by the M.D. of Opportunity No. 17, which has used the machines for a variety of purposes.
“We were blown away by all the stuff Bigstone Cree Nation and Wabasca has done with the system this first year. They’ve given us examples we didn’t even think of,” he said. “They diverted water when they had a water main break, they’ve set up a fee-for-service with the oil companies for all the little ponds. They’re utilizing it outside of fires.”
Councillors agreed they needed to hear from admin before committing to anything, and CAO Bob Beck and his team will be bringing back recommendations in the new year, but the table was still impressed with the work Trident Pumps has been doing.
“We’re located on the margins of the boreal forest, and I think this is really something we can celebrate as a region; this kind of innovative technology is being produced locally. It was thought up here, and it’s been exciting for me to watch the growth of your firm over time,” said Coun. Brian Hall.
“With wildfire ever-present for us, I think this is an opportunity for us to act as leaders when it comes to wildfire fighting.”
