Police cars to be furnished with fuel tank protectors

By Martin B. Cassidy
Staff Writer

December 28, 2007

Concerns about fire safety prompted the town to equip its newly arrived police cruisers with a different technology to prevent gas tank explosions in case of a high speed collision.

In the next two weeks officers will begin driving the seven new Ford Crown Victoria Interceptors that have $600 devices that buffer a patrol car's fuel tank from being punctured during crashes, Police Chief David Ridberg said.

Ford Crown Victoria Interceptors, which are used by many police departments nationwide, have long been criticized for being susceptible to gas tank fires, especially in rear-end collisions. Several police officers around the country have been killed or gravely injured in fires after high impact rear collisions.

Police union officials recommended the device after Ridberg told them that Ford would take at least another six months to deliver new cars that have Ford's own spray-nozzle fire suppression system, Ridberg said.

"The cars will still have the fire suppression but we will also have the new cars in a timely manner and be able to use snow chains," Ridberg said. "I think it is a good compromise."

The Ford-built spray-nozzle system, which was included on five police cars the town bought in 2006, prohibited police from using snow chains on tires, which could damage the nozzles located in the cars' wheel wells, Ridberg said.

Lt. Mark Kordick, vice president of the Greenwich Silver Shield Association, the police union, researched the new device, which is made by New-Jersey-based FIRE Panel LLC, and brought it forward to other officers as a possible solution to the delay.

The FIRE Panel device is a plastic shield that wraps around the fuel tank, and if punctured disperses a chemical dust that will prevent or put out flames near a tank, Kordick said.

"If anything is to penetrate through the panel to the engine, it deploys a fire retardant material," Kordick said. "It also resolves the snow chain issue which was a significant safety hazard."

Town Fleet Director Elizabeth Linck aid that the new system is lower maintenance then the previous system.

"The fire suppression system is a very complicated system that involves a lot of dos and don'ts in how you maintain it," Linck said. "The chief asked us to consider these panels and they seem fine."

The police department's General Services Director, Greg Hannigan, said that the department replaces about a quarter of its 20 marked police cruisers each year.

Patrol cars are replaced when they have been driven more than 80,000 miles, Hannigan said, or earlier if they have significant wear and tear or collision damage.