milan fire dept probie

actualy the device costs about $1200 each but on this particular fire there were 2 cars in the yard and a purse still on the front seat of one of the cars so the thought was that there is still people inside so the desision was made by a firefighter jeff galm to throw the device to try and slow the spread of the fire to give us time to do our search. it made a great difference it held the fire to that room for several more minutes until we could establish an aggresive interior attack it made a difference for that house standing and that house being burned down to the ground in my mind and looking at the way the fire was held that if we did not deploy the device we would have lost the whole house

i was on the first interior attack into the fire room and as we went in the fire was knocked down significantly from what it had looked like b4 the fit-5 was thrown. the walls in the fire room were burned completely through and most of the studs were gone but there was the powder from the fit-5 that covered the walls in the rooms next to the fire room and most of those struts were never even touched by heat or flame. it was fascinating how much this device stoped the fire spread and gave us time to search the building there was little to no damage on the upper floor of the building because of this device. while doing overhaul i found the device in the middle of the hall between the fire room and the dinning room where we stoped the fire spread and the position was perfect and the outcome could not have been better. the only real fire load after the device was thrown in was around the windows and the couches burning in the rooms but i believe that the fit-5 def saved that building and i would recomend them to any dept and as far as certain conditions to operate with the amount of fire showing i never would have thought it would have done the job it did but it really put a knock down on the fire itself and gave us time to get established and get an aggresive interior attack established

where do you sign up to take the classes ??? need to sign up at least 5 ff to go .. and 2nd thing does anyone know if a FAST team class will be held there ???

in my fire dept we have top mounted pumps and it seems to work really well when you can have all your gauges in front of you and be able to see off both sides of the truck there fore ( since we are a rural volunteer dept) the pump operator can see the draft on one side and his discharges off the other .. personaly i like the top mounts b/c it works best for our department. and the noise level isnt to bad with the top mounts and we are equiping our trucks with head sets so the operators can hear a little better but i figure whatever your department is like and what it does its whatever best fits their needs