A local business in Milan is helping first responders with a new product.

Fol-Da-Tank is a business that creates folding water tanks for firefighters who may not have access to an extra water supply. Fol-Da-Tank employees were hard at work Thursday putting together the finishing touches on the frames of the brand-new water tanks.

“The strategy is to extinguish the fire, drown the cab, deploy the tank, flood the tank, and maintain the level,” said Keith Niebur, chief operating officer for Fol-Da-Tank when talking about their brand new water tank called Da-EV tanks.

The electric vehicle water tanks extinguish fires caused by electric car batteries. The portable tank will wrap around the electric vehicle that is on fire, and first responders can fill the tank with water and extinguish the fire from the ground up.

“You can detect with a thermal camera if the batteries are 140 degrees or less,” said Niebur. “Once it’s under that amount, then the vehicle is safe for transport.”

The new Da-EV portable water tanks will help first responders who need to extinguish those fires that are caused by electric vehicles, which are a growing trend in the United States. “It’s easy to deploy,” Neibur said. “Typically with a fire team it’s going to take a matter of seconds. The same is true to collapse it. Then, it’s easily put in the back of an incident command vehicle or a pickup truck and transported to the next fire.”

Niebur says the original idea for the fold-able water tanks came from rural firefighting. “In rural firefighting there’s no access to fire hydrants,” Niebur said. “Tankers needed to transport water to the fire scene so the engine can pump the water out and fight the fire.”

Niebur says he looks forward to providing the Quad Cities first responders with their updated equipment, as well as servicing and shipping their new products all over the globe.

“All of the towns in the quad cities have our products in some fashion,” Niebur said. “Whether it be our EVAC line, our search and rescue packs, our drop tanks, or our bladders.”