"We dont' have fires anymore"

[HFDCLanger]

http://cms.firehouse.com/content/art...Id=46&id=21924

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This must be why we don’t care about rapid knockdowns in fully involved commercial and industrial buildings, because the fire building is already lost.

This is a good example of why we don’t need big pumps – 1,250 gpm is more than enough for what we have.

LDH? My dualin’ 2 1/2s work fine most of the time.

Don’t waste space on big hosebeds and multiple dividers. I don’t know about you, but you’ll never catch me picking up dual 5” or 6” lines. And besides, we’ll shut down access to the fire scene by dropping LDH across the road.

Our hydrant spacing is 500 feet, so 1000 feet of supply line is twice as much as we need. 2000 feet of supply line on all my engines? Massive hose tenders? Get out of here.

Big 2,000 gpm deck guns, bomb lines, blitz lines, and large caliber hand lines? What a waste of money – you’ll never use them.

Remote monitors, one-man portables, and remote hydrant valves? Just more expensive devices to break. Manpower and speed aren't issues in a surround and drown – you’ve lost the building anyway.

We’re a CITY department, and all our hydrants flow 1,000 gpm – we’re not going to stoop to the level of those rural volunteers and identify alternative water supplies that require DRAFTING. They don’t know what they’re doing anyway.

......And even if we did have to *coughcough* draft, the 20 feet of hard suction with the barrel strainer we have would work just fine.

You might also notice that every call turns out to be exactly the way it is dispatched, and will never turn into anything else. That’s why we can specialize our fleet and dispatch the mini pumper to car fires, the brush truck to outdoor fires, and the utility truck to dumpster fires. And “smoke in the area” always means a wildland fire.


So on your next shift, don’t go out and try one of those 2,500gpm single company drills, don’t re-examine the way you do things and don’t take a look at new technology and innovative ideas. Because we’ve always done it this way, it’s always worked (well, almost always), this new stuff won’t make a difference, and we don’t have big fires anymore!


Does any of this sound familiar to you?

[k1500chevy97]

Perfect examples of why you need all that stuff

[MIKEYLIKESIT]

And your point is?

[Weruj1]

uhmmmmmmmmmmmm I dont get it ........

[alfaerialtech]

#1. there is no point.

#2. if you don't get it, then don't think about it.

#3. every fire is different, which means, it takes different measures to fight it.

[DeputyChiefGonzo]

This must be why we don’t care about rapid knockdowns in fully involved commercial and industrial buildings, because the fire building is already lost.

Some building were "built to burn"or allowed to decay; others have had their fire protection systems compromised by doing things like stacking merchandise right up to and above the sprinkler heads, not maintaining their fire protection systems, sprinkler systems dismantled without proper permits, etc.

The examples that you linked to, for want of a better word... suck! Both Pawtucket and Chicago had to deal with heavy fire in warehouse/mill construction fanned by high winds with gusts up to 60MPH. Once the wind takes it... the building is lost..and the only thing you can do is exposure protrction and brand control!

This is a good example of why we don’t need big pumps – 1,250 gpm is more than enough for what we have.

Many of the smaller rural departments, like many of your neighbors in Central Massachusetts still run front mount 750 GPM pumps as front line pieces.

LDH? My dualin’ 2 1/2s work fine most of the time.

Yessiree bob! Two deuce and half lines on an aggressive fire attack knocks the living snot out of a fire! Most FD's have 4" LDH now, some have 5".

Don’t waste space on big hosebeds and multiple dividers. I don’t know about you, but you’ll never catch me picking up dual 5” or 6” lines. And besides, we’ll shut down access to the fire scene by dropping LDH across the road.

Hosebeds are getting bigger, because the trucks are getting bigger.
We have 4 inch LDH, and an excellent hydrant system... if I have to lay dual 4"s, I have one helluva big fire! And if I want the access shut down, I will request the PD to reroute traffic ...too many whackers think they can follow the trucks in and get a ringside seat!

Our hydrant spacing is 500 feet, so 1000 feet of supply line is twice as much as we need. 2000 feet of supply line on all my engines? Massive hose tenders? Get out of here.

Some big city FD's still run hose wagons. You might need massive hose tenders and 2K feet of LDH out there in Smalltown USA. Most FD's have what works for them...

Big 2,000 gpm deck guns, bomb lines, blitz lines, and large caliber hand lines? What a waste of money – you’ll never use them.

Hmmm...how many times have you used them in Hubbardston? I know that pulling big lines is done a hell of a lot more in the City than in rural areas...and they actually get to put out the fire and save the structure as opposed to wetting down the embers in a cellar hole.

Remote monitors, one-man portables, and remote hydrant valves? Just more expensive devices to break. Manpower and speed aren't issues in a surround and drown – you’ve lost the building anyway.

Especially when you have toned out a fire three or four times and have gotten minimal response and you have called mutual aid, who in turn had to tone out three or four times, because they also had a minimal response to go to your community......

We’re a CITY department, and all our hydrants flow 1,000 gpm – we’re not going to stoop to the level of those rural volunteers and identify alternative water supplies that require DRAFTING. They don’t know what they’re doing anyway.

We are a rural department and don't have fire hydrants...why do we have to learn about that "big city stuff"...hydrant hookups, HAVS, etc.... this is just another bull*** statement. Even the "city FD's" have identified alternative water sources... like lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, the ocean....hell, I have seen FD's draft out of swimming pools when the water mains failed!

......And even if we did have to *coughcough* draft, the 20 feet of hard suction with the barrel strainer we have would work just fine.

Unless you had to to lift your water supply an additonal few feet or so...roll another truck...utilize their suction and their manpwer!

You might also notice that every call turns out to be exactly the way it is dispatched, and will never turn into anything else. That’s why we can specialize our fleet and dispatch the mini pumper to car fires, the brush truck to outdoor fires, and the utility truck to dumpster fires. And “smoke in the area” always means a wildland fire.

We are specialized all right...

car fire: send the nearest Engine

brush fire: send the brush unit with an Engine..wow...additional personnel plus a water supply!

dumpster fire: send an Engine

"smoke in the area": send an Engine to investigate. Why roll everything when chances are it is someone firing up the old woodstove and they don't have a proper draught?

So on your next shift, don’t go out and try one of those 2,500gpm single company drills, don’t re-examine the way you do things and don’t take a look at new technology and innovative ideas. Because we’ve always done it this way, it’s always worked (well, almost always), this new stuff won’t make a difference, and we don’t have big fires anymore!

Ask the brothers in Pawtucket RI, Somersworth NH, Boston, Hartford CT, Bridgeport, Lawrence, Lowell etc about "big fires"..seing that your community, Hubbardston had a grand total of...

[size=huge]ZERO fires in 2001![/size]

The information came from the Department of Fire Services' website http://www.state.ma.us/dfs/ from the 2001 annual report.

Did we have an LHS moment?

[FFMcDonald]

I can't tell if this is a 'cerebral fart' on the part of HFDCLanger - or if he is trying to paint a target on himself.

If he has a point - I couldn't find it.....

[blancety]

Originally posted by HFDCLanger

Does any of this sound familiar to you? [/B]

Nope, doesn't sound the least bit familiar. Maybe its those little voices or something?

[33motor]

Actually, what I think HFD is trying to convey is sarcasm...

I may be wrong, but I think he's using these 2 big fires as an arguement FOR the epuipment he seems to be bashing. At first I didn't get it...

I guess he's making "quotes" from arguements he's heard against, say for instance, LDH. In other words, he's for LDH and bigger pumps, and is now using these fires as an arguement to say back to whomever, "I told you so."

At least that's what I think he's trying to do...

But... I could be wrong.

[FFMcDonald]

OK -- I'll play......

"Firefighters continue to battle a massive fire that destroyed an abandoned mill and engulfed several homes in Pawtucket Friday. Officials say the fire has been contained."

Makes alot of sense to kill a firefighter to save an abandoned building.

Ever hear the other mantra of the fire service -
"We'll risk a life - to safe a life."
but we won't risk a life to save what is already lost.

[Dave1105]

Like everybody else here, I fail to see a clear point in your post. The sarcasim is clear.... but it doesn't seem to make any kind of coherant point.

What are you saying? That every fire truck should be a multi-combination truck, with 3 steering axles, carrying enough hose to reach the moon and enough equipment to deal with every single instance we are going to come accross?

Yeah, I suppose we could do that. Or we could give each truck a radio and just ask for additional equipment if we require it??

[Dalmatian90]

In respect to the Pawtucket fire,
From today's Providence Journal:
"Our fire trucks that were the first on the scene immediately tried to protect that area, to no avail. The wind was just gusting too much," (Acting Pawtucket Fire Chief) Renzi said.

"We must have had gusts of 40, 50, 60 mph, to the point where, when I first arrived on the scene, I couldn't even walk. I was being blown off my feet. That's how severe the wind was.

Within minutes, the inferno swept over two houses on Woodbine Street. The roof of a tenement on Darlingdale Avenue, a few doors down from Cottage Street, caught fire. An entire fire company had its hands full putting out that blaze.

The scene was repeated all over the working-class neighborhood just east of the George R. Bennett Industrial Highway. Houses caught fire on Kenyon, Mendon and Central Avenues and on Darlingdale Avenue and Woodbine Street. Windblown embers set fire to the roof of another tenement at Darlingdale and Willard Street, half a mile a way."

Ok HFDClanger, you have what you want on your first due companies.
Here's an aerial picture of the complex: http://tinyurl.com/v4h5
That weave shed (big building with the skylights) is about 200' x 200'. The mill is about 50' x 400'. Buildings are undergoing demolition, so windows are open, floors have holes in them, and walls are breached all over the place -- so the fire's gonna spread faster than normal, but your streams are still gonna have trouble penetrating. Got 20mph sustained winds with 40+ mph gusts. Oh, and your wood-frame, 3 story residential exposures start across a four-hundred foot long, ten foot wide alley on the downwind side from a 3 story mill. The complex itself has fences, overhead powerlines, and parking lots mostly taken over by vegetation to affect your apparatus & monitor placement. Residential streets are narrow, and again have overhead powerlines criss-crossing them.

How are you going to deploy the first 3, 4 of them to keep the fire from spreading to exposures???

[nmfire]

OK. I'm with everyone else... wherever that is. I THINK he was making fun of the people who think all that fancy stuff is not neccessary. You know, "hundreds of years of progress unihibited by tradition."

Except the "don't try and put the fire out" thing. I think they would have loved to knock that down before it became a scene out of "Firestorm". However, you can only do so much when upon arrival, there is blast furnace attempting to take out an entire neighborhood. Had it been an average structure fire, I would be willing to bet they would have gone after it aggressively at the mill to begin with.

And on that note, I was not there so I am not going to make assumptions that insult those guys when I don't know for sure what went on.

[Duffman]

None of that sounds familiar to me. Sounds as if the ole boy has issues with someone.

[WTFD10]

I don't know folks, it seems plain to me that he's being sarcastic. He's targeting those "We're an EMS department that occasionally goes to a fire" types.

"We don't have big fires anymore so we don't need to (insert training or operational idea here)."

Who hasn't heard this from somebody in their department?

I know I have when I ask why we can't put a smoothbore on one of our 2 1/2's to make it more of a HANDLINE instead of a "loop it and sit on it" line.

[blancety]

Of course his willingness to return to the thread he started an 'splain himself is inspiring......

[ff7134]

You know, I'll keep all my "Expensive Toys" and 1600' of 4in just in case my department is in for the Next "Big One".

[HFDCLanger]

Actual quotes from forum users:

If your pumping that much water from your pumpers, you've lost the building folks. Now you're wasting water.

I'm not sure why you would need much more than a 1250 gpm.

If 1000 gpm works for FDNY and Boston engines, seems like 1000 gpm on a rescue pumper/heavy rescue in most communities should do just fine.

we have 900 feet of 3 inch, and 900 feet of 2 1/2 on each of our engines. That setup has always worked fine for us

the current size is just fine and is not as heavy as the 5" will be.

Once a LDH line is charged, there is no getting over it, this effectively blocks out later arriving apparatus

does your dept carry three sections of hard/flexible suction on the engine? Do you have a float dock? Mine either!

Hard suction is normally stored or on reserve apparatus.

Let me know if you want more – they shouldn’t be too hard to find.

[HFDCLanger]

The examples that you linked to, for want of a better word... suck! Both Pawtucket and Chicago had to deal with heavy fire in warehouse/mill construction fanned by high winds with gusts up to 60MPH.

Yes, Gonzo, I’m sorry – you’re right: they suck. Heavy fire, warehouse/mill construction, high winds – the combination could never happen again (it’s never happened before, for that matter). So why don’t we just sit around all happy with ourselves because it will never happen again.

Care to explain yourself?

Many of the smaller rural departments, like many of your neighbors in Central Massachusetts still run front mount 750 GPM pumps as front line pieces.

Am I missing something here, too? Do you think you offend me by talking about neighboring departments? I don’t care what “the guys down the road” are doing anymore than I care about what the guys on the other side of the country are doing, because many of them still have no clue of how to move water. I care about the departments that understand their fire problems and are really doing something about it.

If I cared so much about what my neighbors were doing, then tell me why we’re specing 2,500-3,500 gpm pumps on our new apparatus.

And by the way – all of our neighbors run with 1,250-1,750’s on their front line pieces, so your argument holds no ground.

We have 4 inch LDH, and an excellent hydrant system...

If anybody on these boards has an excellent hydrant system, that would be STATION2’s volunteer department. And they run with nearly 2,000 feet of 5” AND 6” on all of their engines. I think it is saying something when STATION2’s VOLUNTEER department can earn a Class 1 rating both inside and outside of their hydrant system when your CAREER department is stuck with a Class 3. Or would that be a Class 3/9?

Most FD's have what works for them...

What “works for them”, or what is the most effective way of delivering the services they’re supposed provide? There’s a big difference here, and I don’t think that the latter is true.

Hmmm...how many times have you used them in Hubbardston? I know that pulling big lines is done a hell of a lot more in the City than in rural areas

And this must be why we probably flow 2 to 3 times more out of our 2 1/2” lines than you do.......?

Oh, do you mean for flows in the realm of 200-250 gpm? Then yes, you’re right: it’s because we’re not stupid enough to pull a big heavy line that will require a larger crew and increase firefighter fatigue when we can flow the same or more out of a much more manageable line.

and they actually get to put out the fire and save the structure as opposed to wetting down the embers in a cellar hole.

I’m sure you already have all the supporting data to back up your statements. Could we have some facts, please? I’m also glad to see your efforts to keep these forums professional: Start a discussion on general firefighting tactics, respond with personal attacks. Very good.

Especially when you have toned out a fire three or four times and have gotten minimal response and you have called mutual aid, who in turn had to tone out three or four times, because they also had a minimal response to go to your community......

Yes, right again. That must be why we maintain response times as good as many city departments with our call staffing. It must be why all of our surrounding communities almost immediately came to depend on us for ALS services due to our dependability, rapid response times, and high levels of staffing. It must be why State officials have called us a model service. Would you like me to keep going?

Unless you had to to lift your water supply an additonal few feet or so...roll another truck...utilize their suction and their manpwer

That’s a good idea – dedicate TEN firefighters and TWO engines on a multiple alarm fire (when you’re probably already stripped of resources) to do the job of ONE firefighter and ONE engine.

We are specialized all right... car fire: send the nearest Engine brush fire: send the brush unit with an Engine..wow...additional personnel plus a water supply! dumpster fire: send an Engine "smoke in the area": send an Engine to investigate. Why roll everything when chances are it is someone firing up the old woodstove and they don't have a proper draught?

You know as well as I do that this is not true in many cases, and that the fire departments of today have far over-specialized their fleets. A good-sized city career fire department in the central-Massachusetts area recently dispatched their brush truck to a report of a “fire in the woods”. They had to turn around when they got there because it was a fully involved structure fire. Sorry, sorry – you’re right again – it never happens.


Gonzo, why do you want to turn this into a city vs. rural, career vs. volunteer argument? The rural guys who don’t know how to dress a hydrant and use a HAV are just as bad as the city guys who don’t know how to use their alternative water supplies. Neither department is trained or equipped to deal with the hazards they might have to deal with.

I don’t care whether a department is volunteer, career, paid-on-call, combination, urban, suburban, rural, East coast, West coast, Massachusetts or California. I am not attached to any one group more than the other. As I said earlier, what I care about is a department that has identified their hazards and community needs and has taken the proper steps and risen to the occasion to provide the best services possible. End of story.

[HFDCLanger]

Originally posted by hfd66truck: Nope, doesn't sound the least bit familiar.

So either you guys run a perfect department (let’s see if he’ll make any claims to this one), you’re so horribly pitiful that nobody on the department has tried to innovate in the slightest (nope, I don’t think he’ll want to admit to this one), or you’re lying (hmm, these options aren’t looking so good); which is it, HFD?

Originally posted by 33motor: Actually, what I think HFD is trying to convey is sarcasm...

I’m glad somebody gets it.

Originally posted by FFMcDonald: Makes alot of sense to kill a firefighter to save an abandoned building.

Please explain to me how laying in with multiple LDH lines, setting up big monitors well outside of the collapse zone and stopping the fire in it’s tracks is more risky than letting it turn into a massive fire storm.

Do you propose that we let our firefighters run in with their 1 ¾” lines and kill themselves that way, so at least if they die, they can look like heroes? There are some stories about guys like that – they often have a badge with a black band around it at the top of the page. Care to be their chief?

Why are we going to kill our firefighters by providing them with deck guns that they can operate without climbing on top of the apparatus (a leading cause of injuries), providing them with monitors that shut off by themselves when they begin to move, and providing them with devices such as automatic hydrant valves and one-man blitz lines that free up critical manpower to perform more important tasks, like Safety Officer?

Like the rest of them, your argument holds no ground.

Originally posted by Duffman: None of that sounds familiar to me. Sounds as if the ole boy has issues with someone.

Good – why don’t you give hfd66truck a call and see if he wants to hang out?

Originally posted by WTFD10: I don't know folks, it seems plain to me that he's being sarcastic. He's targeting those "We're an EMS department that occasionally goes to a fire" types. "We don't have big fires anymore so we don't need to (insert training or operational idea here)." Who hasn't heard this from somebody in their department?

Ah, finally another enlightened creature - You have hit the nail on the head.