North Bay Underground Facility - When the underground radar installation at North bay was being constructed, I was the Deputy RCAF Fire Marshal. I was requested to go to North Bay and accept the Fire Protection System covering the underground POL storage facility. The installing contractor, Pyrene of Canada assured me that the foam system would operate automatically in the event of a fire. However, I insisted that it be demonstrated before I could verify that the system would in fact operate in the event of a fire. After much discussion the contractor agreed to manually operate the foam system. "What a mess", it took the contractor a week to clean up the foam. However, I was able to verify that the fire protection operated as designed

By Archie Graham, Flight Lieutenant, Retired