Chains on Fire Apparatus

[SteveOFD 176]

One point I do not like about them is that they are horrid in reverse. A few years back I was the driver and responded to a vehicle fire in 6" of snow. Got there and back to station and then could not get the truck backed into the bay. The chains did not work at all in reverse and there was only maybe 4" on the pad( the plow guy was doing his job, it was a bad storm). Full chains are the real deal,

I was going to post almost the exact same scenario, I too could not back the rig into the Firehouse. The only difference was that I had to take the rig down one of the steepest hills in the Village (the street that the Firehouse is on), get all the way down, turn around, then with the OnSpots deployed get back up the hill past the FH, then let gravity back me into Quarters. Not a fun time. This is why we did not spec the automatic chains on our new rig.

[16fire5 693]

I've used both and I'm with M on this one I'll take real chains every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I think the cost of the on spots can go to better use when specing new apparatus. I will also mention that when I worked the other night we did find a street impassible even with good chains. As for driving in the virgin snow it is not an option on the residential streets since cars are parked on both sides and they are generallly not wide enough to get outside the tracks. We break links frequently but don't think I've seen much damage from chains. The fact that engines may have to stop on a hill to hit a hydrant and then proceed to the fire to me makes on-spots pretty useless.

[MoFire390 118]

onspots are ok...the department i belong too has chains for all of our engines which we put on either the day of or the day before the snow. we all know how "wonderful" of a job that our local town and village DPW workers do at plowing. the ambulaces we use our 4x4 rig during the snow, chains kinda do nothing only have had to use them once. stay out there all especially with this ugly storm we are getting on tuesday and wednesday.