pauloghia

What I'm meaning is that we learn to drive early in rural America on farmland, offroading or on the road in less populated areas. I'm guessing you drove the milk truck years ago. This goes on here today. Never mind, the point is now MIA.

The rigs needed additional training, however yes qualification on it meant you were qualified to drive the Pierce engine, however you still needed additional training on it. In the rural parts of the country and in Appalachia, people learn to drive vehicles much earlier than in the urban areas, so there's earlier experience brought to the table. While a 14 year old in the city relies on their parents for rides, the 14 year old here is already offloading dune buggies through the hills and driving them on the road where it's secluded and cops rarely go. At the same time when you're running two firehouses with at the most, five on duty firefighters having to rely on volunteers and four first out rigs, the lines get blurred. Does the chief take his car, or drive the quint and turn it over to a volunteer that can operate the ladder? We were tasked often with questions like that. On a night that I actually made a response on the quint which was rare, the chief almost drove the rig the 30 miles to the next town for aid himself that seventeen departments ended up turning out to, until a very skilled volunteer pulled in.

Now that I look back, I can laugh at this but on an engine I would run on, I would open the door, grab hold of a handrail and swing myself around and land on my feet. I felt like the firefighter George of the jungle. I'm still young, but I miss being that young now.

Sounds like your company did their homework and made an A. This has been very helpful and I appreciate it. The thought of an airpack flying by my head and going through the windshield is haunting.

Preventative maintenance procedures? Simple. My departments were in eastern Kentucky, where everyone is a mechanic. Tools and equipment and where they're carried? We weren't FDNY with hundreds of firehouses. We had two in a five mile radius at the paid department. The volunteer house had everything under one roof and we were always able to turn out both engines and tankers together. Knowing how to operate all tools? What do you think we did all day other than wash the trucks and look at women walking by? Capacities and limitations? I'll put it to you like this. I had better hoped both chiefs went into a coma from the anger stroke they would have suffered had I not known the actual capacities that the engines I was pumping could handle. That was taken care of in our pump operators certification, not drivers certification. Hoses and fittings are blurry now from both. I remember the Pierce engine and the LaFrance being equipped with two 200 foot sections of 1 3/4 inch crosslays. It's been between six to eight years since I've served with each and I can't accurately recall anymore how much hose was carried in the rear, supply or attack. All I remember now was the Pierce carrying two 1 3/4 inch hand lines, 2 1/2 inch supply and 5 inch supply. The ALF had a 2 1/2 inch line attached to a blitz nozzle, another bed of 2 1/2 inch supply and I believe a 3 inch supply line, with a chassis that was configured as a squad. The Ford had two booster lines in place of cross lays and mirrored the Pierce in the back. Cab controls, what do you mean? Are you seriously implying I would chauffeur a rig and not know where the turn signals and parking brake are at, or not know how to adjust my mirrors? Our drivers training was more than just jumping behind the wheel and joyriding around town. We had a road course, cone course, familiarization for each vehicle, then pump operators training with each. I wasn't expected to be able to smoothly transition from a 1978 gas engine Ford/Jaco with a 750 gpm pump to a 1996 Pierce with a midship 1250 gpm pump unless I had been trained on both. Same holds true transitioning from a 1962 Pirsch with 1000 gpm pump to a 2005 ALF with midship 1250 pump. The personnel approved to operate Aerial 1 had to complete both pump and ladder operations training since it was a quint and operated as a truck. Oh yeah I almost forgot, ground ladders on all the engines were the same, 12 foot roof ladder, 24 foot extension ladder and a 10 foot attic ladder. Aerial 1 carried 85 feet worth of ground ladders. I was assigned to the Ford, which was Engine 150, then Rescue 1, so the truck guys knew it better than I did. Don't forget, things are done differently outside of where ever it is you're from, but it still ends up working the same in the end. On my visits back home to Staten Island and seeing a friend of mine at his north shore company, they were always interested in learning how we operated, instead of offering quick criticism without knowing the full story.

I've heard several times that either NFPA or OSHA is trying to make seat-mounted SCBA brackets a thing of the past, because of the danger of packing up urging a response. I've seen the crew portion of the LAFD Seagraves and they lack seat brackets. Their SCBA's are mounted facing the seat instead. Is this rumor true? I was thinking that's the reason why the brackets have been manufactured now to lock the SCBA in place. Can anyone who's involved with manufacturing or drawing specifications shed some light on this, or anyone else who knows?

I don't know how it works in NY but I'll explain how we've done it in KY where I've served. First on the department I worked for, our largest rig was a Aerial 1, a Pierce Arrow quint with 105 foot ladder. Anyone certified on this piece was automatically certified on Engine 1, a crew cab Freightliner/Pierce, our crew cab Ford F-Series rescue and the staff vehicles. If you certified on Engine 1, you were certified for everything except the ladder and so on with the other vehicles, according to size. The operators for Engine 150, a Ford C/Jaco had to specially certify on it, because it was a manual shift. Being certified on Aerial 1 didn't mean you were able to operate Engine 150, but being certified on Engine 150 allowed you to be certified to operate Engine 1. I was certified on Engine 1, so I was able to be an operater for any vehicle, except the ladder and the old Ford. On my volunteer department, everyone was required to certify on our first piece, a crew cab Freightliner/American LaFrance. Certifying on the ALF didn't allow you to operate our second piece, a 1962 Pirsch. Certifying with that old Pirsch on the other hand allowed you to operate the ALF without question. The thought was if you could handle a tank, you can handle a new LaFrance. Our tankers required certification separately because one was an automatic and the other was a manual shift. I passed the ALF and the automatic tanker, then flunked the Pirsch and the manual shift tanker beyond miserably. That's just my example from my part of the country.

I need to make a correction to my last post. The first sentence was supposed to read that width isn't an issue.

Width is an issue when the largest vehicle we would encounter on one of these narrow roads is a pickup truck, thus negating the issue with mirrors. US 60 is a different story as it has heavy truck traffic, but the lane width wasn't an issue on that road in the first place, only in the areas where the road was as wide as a lane and a half. Even if a pickup were tall enough in one of these hollows, I'd rather trade mirrors than drive the engine into the rock in an attempt to avoid a head-on collision. Remember with these roads in mountain hollows, there's only one way in and one way out, so extrication is another nightmare when there's a collision on them. No offense to everyone, but preference of customs isn't what I've been curious about. I've previously ran on a Pierce Arrow, Mack CF and Seagrave Commander; also a Ford C if you want to count it and I prefer these type. Where I'm at now, I'm currently running on a Spartan cab. I've been curious about how custom you can get a commercial cab, since ALF was the first I had seen to offer something off the shelf that was more than a typical engine, but less than a full blown one off specialized design. I feel that to continuosly question why my department made our preference down to the inches of a design and making comparisions without knowing its coverage goes nowhere, considering I've already explained in detail the area that the truck makes its respnoses in and the training and experience that it's drivers have from their other walk in life.

There isn't a website, however if you're on Facebook, search "Hayes Crossing Haldeman" until you find them. I left the department in 2007 when I moved, but have kept up with then and volunteer somewhere else in Kentucky now. If you're interested in the rig, pm me your email and I can send a couple to you.

These roads are in rural north eastern Kentucky, so width plays a major difference once you get off the beaten path. Our widest road was US 60E which has regular sized lanes without shoulders, but the rest of our coverage consisted of narrow, winding mountain roads with a cliff on one side and a mountain on the other, or a mountian on one side and a creek on the other. Even US 60 gets goofy in some places, winding around a hillside. Length wasn't a problem, since most of the people who would end up driving the engine had experience as regular truck drivers, or truck drivers pulling mobile homes onto mountain tops that would absolutely blow your mind. To shorten the length, we didn't opt for an extended bumper. The last thing we wanted was to run lights and siren at any time of the day or night on one of these back roads and send either us, or an oncoming vehicle into or down the mountain. The LaFrance dealer out of Nitro, WV brought us both an Eagle and a Metropolitan cab to look at and evaluate and both were determined to be too wide. It was determined quickly when we met oncoming traffic while test driving on these roads and both of us would've had to slow down considerably in order pass safely and and avoid hitting each other. The two city departments we run aid to which account for the majority of our fire load have customs that aren't allowed to leave their city limits for these purposes. One runs a Pierce Endorcer and the other runs a Spartan/Smeal. For county runs since fire coverage here is drastically different than in the northeast, they had to do the same thing as us. One city (Olive Hill, KY) runs a Pierce Contender on a Kenworth chassis and the other (Morehead, KY) runs an interestingly configured E-One on a Freightliner chassis. Furthermore, we had placed several older and smaller vehicles OOS for maintenance costs, operations or other reasons, hence the decision to integrate all capabilities into one unit. I had done it several times, running a first responder call located in a hollow, MVC on the county line or a fire in the new engine, then getting a call to provide aid to either the rural areas that belong to the city on our left (Olive Hill), the city on our right (Morehead), or even to respond further in our own county for another department. The only custom cabs in my county that were well suited were an older Mack CF engine for another neighboring department, then a Mack CF with 55 foot snorkel and a Pierce Arrow operated by another county department. Olive Hill also kept a Mack CF-aerialscope. In the case of the Mack engine, it's much smaller than modern custom cabs and ran second due anyway. With the Mack snorkel and the Pierce running first due, that department had the good fortune of being located in a flatter area with mostly regular sized roads, however they also ran into the same problem with narrow hollows and kept an International chassis for that purpose. All fire districts are different. The type of equipment and how they're spec'd properly, even if they're based on a cookie cutter model plays into whether or not that apparatus will be effective on the fireground. Obviously, that ALF would be a logistical and operational nightmare in Manhattan, or probably also Westchester County. We took the pros and cons, figured out what was required, what could be effectively provided, what had to be sacrificed, then fielded the rig that best suited the needs for our community. Unlike departments in the northeast, we also took into account the price and how scarce money is here. Our biggest concern regarding length and width was how long can we keep the engine in service as a front line piece and how wide can we space it's life, since the one that it replaced was a 1962 Peter Pirsch.

One of the reasons I'm so curious about the specialized specs on commercial cab rigs is that I've grown so tired of departments going with what the manufacturers and dealers sell them without considering things such as proper tool placement, pump/tank capacity hose length, seating and other important factors. The other reason was my volunteer department I was on ordered a rescue-pumper on a commercial cab, when we chose to begin operating as a squad company. The requirement was pretty simple and straightforward, seating for at least 4 firefighters, mid-ship 1,250 gpm pump, 1000 gallon tank, hydraulic ladder rack or interior ladder storage with rescue body. The commercial cab was required, because the roads in our first due area were too narrow and tight for a wider custom cab. American LaFrance met our requirement perfectly in 2005. Imagine the same rig as Richmond Engine Co. but with a four door Freightliner cab and mid-ship panel. It ended up being an off the shelf model, but it was the first time I saw one that was more specialized than what I had seen in the past. My department at least knew what we needed, made a simple spec and were able to match it up to what was available. It wasn't the flashiest rig in my county, but all of the other departments agreed that it got the job done the best.

With apparatus having grown to super sized proportions with tons of options, when was it that the rigs began to be spec'd out very specifically and not just built to one blueprint? Also, is it possible to order a highly spec'd pumper on a modern commercial cab, like a Freightliner or Kenworth? The only ones I've ever seen have been generic off the shelf rigs.

YES! That's it! Thank you, I now have it saved.

I remember seeing a pic several years ago in a book of I think an FDNY battalion chief from the 1930's. It was in black and white obviously. The photographer took the shot of the front of the chief, as he was standing in his rubber coat and leather helmet and boots, looking up at whatever building was on fire. I believe his battalion car was also behind him. It might've been a higher ranking chief; I have trouble remembering the exact rank and his name. The pic told a very big story, just from the look in his eyes. Does anyone have that pic or know which one I'm talking about?

Does anyone have a good pic of West Hamilton's Mack? I can never find any.

Thanks a lot guys. When I say stored, it's been kept in the corner of my house collecting dust, thankfully not in a storage unit or anywhere else. Yes, I do need to get the cylinder a new hydro date and the pack tested. Everything looks good on the outside, but it could all be different of course inside. I've always thought the discoloration didn't mean anything either, then a battalion chief in the town I live in gave an SCBA course to my FD and said anything like that needs to be taken out of service. My next step is finding the place that deals with Scott. I live in central Kentucky and its big MSA country here.

I was looking at my Scott AP50 I own after storing it for the last five years and realized that one of the straps had turned brown from getting too hot during usage. It's not a big area, but should I take it out of service and not wear it for live burn trainings until the strap is replaced, or is it still good to use? I've seen other packs over the last decade that you could've sworn came with brown straps and they were still in service.

My favorite I've ever used is my personally owned AP50 with 30 minute cylinder. No integrated PASS or anything fancy. Just simple small and light airpak. I'm 5'5 and 120 lbs on a good day so for me, lightest is most convienent.

If done properly, that could be pretty bad a**.

I still know a few departments in eastern Kentucky that are running the John Bean Hi-pressure rigs. Those things are awesome. I even have a pic of a rare enclosed clab FMC they built that's still ran as 1st due.

Oh yeah I forgot one. I've made the transition from VHF to UHF and now, 800mz. When I looked at the 800mz radio for the first time a month ago, I was completely confused with it.

I remember the elephant trunks. I called them Snuffleupagus tubes. They were on my first assignment, an archaic 1978 Jaco/Ford with a gas engine, manual shift, booster reels and 750 gpm pump. The other firehouse had the newer rigs, lucky me. I'll never forget after I left the city and volunteered for a couple of years. We received a 2005 ALF (similar to the one at Richmond Engine on Staten Island) and trying to unfasten myself and the SCBA from the seat at its first fire. I had known but had to relearn the hard way that the brackets now locked lol. It was the first year I think that seatbelts came in orange instead of black and the panel was completely computerized. I might be wrong, but I think air packs beginning next year will require an escape system to be attached and in my absence, bourke shields became approved eye protection. Maybe I'm wrong but if memory serves correctly, FAST/RIT didn't exist in 2001, or the concept was only beginning. My first captain began in 1975 and he's said a lot of the same things you have in the past.

I was hired on the job early in 2001 and left in 2007, then returned recently as a volunteer. I was surprised at the changes from the time I left to now and the ones I've seen in the fire service in the span of time from 2001. For example, I read that a change to NFPA 1901 says that firefighters aren't to wear their helmets in moving apparatus. For another example, from the time I was hired to the time I left, I made the transition from low-pressure 2216 psi MSA SCBA's with a separate PASS device, to high-pressure 4500 psi Scott AP50's with integrated PASS and HUD. What other changes has everyone seen since either 2001 or 2007? Obviously the old saying "200 years of tradition, unimpeded by progress" is only a joke.

Check this out. My b/s meter just rose 100% after reading this article. This isn't meant to be an us vs. politicians thread, but there has to be a better way to deal with the budget issue in Grand Rapids. http://firegeezer.com/2012/02/08/fire-chief-wants-to-replace-fire-engines-with-pickup-trucks/