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NORTH BEND, Wash. -- The Washington State Patrol is investigating a serious mishap that occurred Oct. 25th at its fire training academy in North Bend.

During a training exercise, firefighters mistakenly pumped jet fuel instead of water onto a flaming mock-up of an airplane crash. KING 5 obtained video that shows an enormous fireball erupted when the fuel hit the flames at the training site.

“When the firefighters put water on a fire that had been deliberately developed for training the fire got bigger instead of smaller,” said Bob Calkins of the State Patrol, which is investigating the incident.

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*BlackFox wrote:
Seriously, How in the world did they manage... to make that mistake?

Calkins said investigators believe that the academy’s oil/water separator – which recycles the water used for fire training exercises – did not correctly filter the jet fuel used for the exercise from the reclaimed water.

So crews filled their tanks with water tainted with jet fuel -– a combustible combination.

Calkins said an expert hired by WSP is investigating whether the 1990’s oil/water separator malfunctioned or whether academy employees did not operate it correctly.