Beware! Make sure your pins are in!

[Hillcrest379NY]

In my department, we run mostly Pierce apparatus, so of course, I'm going to have some favortism towards them being the best. However, there was an incident with a KME ladder truck the other day at a structure I thought I should share, so that nobody else makes this mistake.

The department had just purchased a brand new KME 99 (ladder truck) with an adjustable ladder gun. If you haven't seen one before, it means you can slide the nozzle halfway down the ladder if you wanted to (even though I'm not sure why you'd ever want to... just dont raise the ladder that high). Anyway, in order to raise and lower the piping, the sections must be pinned together. When they charged the line though, the entire water piping system shot out with the water, gripped after the nozzle was about 30 feet from the tip of the ladder, and swung down. It was a funny site when we got there to see it looking like that, but EXTREMELY dangerous.

So PLEASE heed my warning. Make sure you have your adjustable telescoping ladder water pipes PINNED before charging them.

[M G]

Pinnable waterways are very versatile and valuable. They are designed so that if you are a company who uses the truck for the tasks it was designed for (i.e. rescue, vent) you keep the waterway pinned to the section below the fly section. This allows you better access to sills, ledges and parapets etc with the tip and that way there is no nozzle and pipe in the way. I can't see why you wouldn't get a pinnable waterway?