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Post by jon hynes on Sept 28, 2008 16:49:42 GMT -5
Arthur Farber was critically injured in the Southwinds Terrace Apartments Fire.
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Post by jon hynes on Sept 28, 2008 17:26:47 GMT -5
From the time of the incident at Southwinds of the shearing of the bolts on the aerial ladder truck until several years later, firemen would not climb the ladders on the ladder trucks, for fear of it happening again. So they would tie a hose to the top rung of the ladder then raise it and hit the water. The hose would go wild and mostly spray the people watching the fires. Kind of pathetic.
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Post by Clipper on Sept 28, 2008 17:32:12 GMT -5
I don't blame them Jon. When I was a firefighter at the base we would train with and assist Rome on occasion. When the General Cable burned in east Rome, I spelled one of their firefighters on the 100 footer. It was much different than when we climbed it during the day for training. You climbed through the smoke cloud, and could not even see the ground. It was pitch black, and the people on the ground guided your aim with the nozzle by talking to you on the bitch box intercom. It was an eerie and dizzying thing to be up there alone in the dark believe me. 100 feet looks like a mile when you are on the top of the ladder and it is free standing out in the open
I almost begged to be able to go up the ladder, but I was happy to come down when I was relieved, and return to our hose lines from our pumper. We had some of our crash equipment with 1000gpm turrets and our 5000 gallon tanker there along with our 1st run pump on a mutual aid response. We could not bring any more equipment off base without them shutting down flying operations because we had to maintain a certain level of crash firefighting capability for them to fly.
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Post by dan on Sept 28, 2008 17:53:37 GMT -5
He wasn't killed, but disabled for life. It was 5 truck, center turntable LaFrance.
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Post by jon hynes on Sept 28, 2008 18:47:42 GMT -5
I was trying to write a reply but decided not to. Any way I try to put my thoughts into words, seems as if I am criticizing the firemen's courage or ability, which is not at all what I want to do. I'm not a writer by any stretch of the imagination, and my words can be easily misunderstood from what I intend to say quite often. And that's not even counting my incredibly dry sense of humor, that most people don't get at all.
I've personally known many firemen and know what they go through to stay in shape for the next a fire. They are true heroes.
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Post by dgriffin on Sept 28, 2008 19:01:20 GMT -5
Jon or Clipper, the date?
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Post by jon hynes on Sept 28, 2008 19:08:03 GMT -5
No thanks! Oh the date of the fire. It was May 26, 1973
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Post by Clipper on Sept 28, 2008 20:43:38 GMT -5
I didn't take your post to mean anything derogatory at all Jon. I was truthfully feeling sympathetic to the firefighters. It truly is a scary thing to be suspended 80 or 100 feet in the air over a burning building on an unsupported ladder, even on a good day. I don't blame them at all for being gun shy of areal ladders after that incident. If you open and close the nozzle too quickly, the ladder will whip like a fly rod, and give you a real thrill.
Had I been in a city department with ladder trucks, I would have stuck to an engine company instead, haha. When I worked in the communications field for Air Force civil service after leaving the fire department, we worked out of 90 foot bucket trucks, and I was not real comfortable bouncing around in a bucket 90 feet from the ground either, LOL.
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Post by jon hynes on Sept 28, 2008 21:37:24 GMT -5
The first time they tried the trick of tying the hose to the ladder should have been enough to see it wasn't going to work. The water seldom hit the building on fire. From that point I would have thought they would rigidly secure the hose on the ladder so it pointed in one direction and it's direction could be controlled from the ground by moving the ladder. Or not bother using the ladder at all.
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Post by Clipper on Sept 28, 2008 23:30:59 GMT -5
That sounds like some serious "jury rigging" to me. Most of the older ladder trucks had a deck gun or turret at the tip of the ladder, and they simply had to run a hose up the center of the bed of the ladder to the nozzle and connect it. That is the way Romes truck was rigged to pump water on a fire from above. I guess on the more modern trucks, there is a telescoping pipe up the bed of the ladder that carries the water to the nozzle at the tip of the ladder or snorkel. I also think they can move the nozzle around by remote control from the ground on the snorkel trucks.
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Post by jon hynes on Sept 29, 2008 1:36:57 GMT -5
I don't know how the ladder truck was equipped. Perhaps there was a cradle and the reason was because the power lines wouldn't allow them to position ladder so the stream of water would hit the fire. There was a fire most every night in Cornhill near where I lived back then so we got to see the same thing repeatedly almost on a nightly basis.
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Post by dan on Sept 29, 2008 9:18:45 GMT -5
Jon & Clip,
We're running 2 ladders, a 50' telesquirt and a 75' Baker tower. Both have prepiped water and the tower has prepiped air. Both have automatic nozzles controlled from the ground or from the tip (electro-hydraulic). I think the tip ratings are either 1000 gpm or 1250 gpm. We've gone to a preset 1" straight tip on the telesquirt for first hit purposes.
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