FireMedic049

My condolences to all involved on your loss.

As I just posted, I'm skeptical about the information posted regarding Pittsburgh. However, the County Police has a SWAT team. Most of the other communities in the County rely on the County Police for services like SWAT & Homicide investigation.

Where'd you get the info regarding Pittsburgh? I live in the area and I've seen nothing about this in the news or heard any chatter about it.

Not quite sure why you quoted me for this response, but I'll assume it was in response to my "why" question. I was in no way attempting to condone what took place at this specific incident, however I really don't see it as any sort of "justification" for a "don't put anybody at the tip" course of action. The incident appears, from the info I've seen so far, to be largely a case of "operator error" - grossly exceeding the max tip load. If you do all of these things on a 250# tip load, then the outcome that occurred is pretty predictable.

I'm well aware of the rope thing, but you still can't properly direct the stream very well doing so. I really don't see it as an "unnecessary risk" to have somebody operating up there and don't quite understand the desire to utilize multiple personnel to direct the stream, when one person could easily and unless you're being stupid, safely from the tip. What's the actual concern with this? Is it a fear of ladder failure? Is it a fear of them falling off? Help me understand because there's a lot more dangerous things you could be doing on the fireground? Apparently they do.

This happened not too far outside my area. The speculation on a "local" forum is leaning towards "operator error" based on the assumption of a tip load limit of 250# with 2 FFs and a 4" supply line running up the ladder. As for why a person was operating at the tip.........well, the ladder did not have a pre-piped waterway. So they had to go "old school" for the master stream, which normally would necessitate a person being there to direct the water flow. Maybe it's just me, but I think you guys are being a bunch of "Safety Sallies" about not wanting to put a person up there to direct the stream.

Maybe we've just been lucky, but my wife and I have owned 2 Chevy Silverados in succession (4 years each) and a Chevy Impala for 6-1/2 years now with virtually no problems with any of them and nothing more than scheduled maintenance repairs. So, from my experiences at least, I'd have to disagree with the "nothing but garbage" assessment.