Light or no lights?

[eppc4u]

I guys, I work for a college. We have our own HazMat Team that works with the town and state and we do have a fire response person who respond to all calls and lets the town FD know if we need them and what the situation is. All of our staff is call fire fighters or full time fire fighters in a town near by. We are expected to arrive on scene ASAP and get the FD a situation report or get our Hazmat team mo moving. My question is we have always had light in our vehicles till a year ago. Now or primary response truck dose not have lights. Do you think not having lights in our situation is good or, do you think it is more dangerous? Keep in mind we have thousands of students trying to cross the streets and we also must respond to MVC with our primary piece as it has all the speedy dry and stuff in. Thank you for your input!

[pgfd65]

Well it's certainly your departments decision but if it were up to me I would definitely want lights on the vehicle especially if your going to be on the scene of MVA's. I think that it's just common sense that your vehicle can never be visible enough to the dumb drivers we deal with these days.

[nameless]

The major issue would be if your response vehicle qualifies as an emergency vehicle.

[FIREMECH1]

I have to agree with nameless on the vehicle classification. The other would be, does it have a siren. If it does, then you should have lights to go with it.

FM1

[FireRescue61]

In any case at least get amber lights!

[fire1977]

Yea, even the street department has amber lights.

Your college may be looking at liability issues, but they have to look at it both ways.

Pretty much, our state fire marshal determines if your vehicle qualifies as an emergency vehicle and issues you a permit for "a red light and audible signal."