On the evening of, Monday, May 31, Montreal, Canada municipal employees were undertaking the inspection and the testing of the vehicle 739 at the garage of the Service of Incendie of Montreal (SSIM) [Montreal Fire Department]. Without any warning, the boom of the Bronto SkyLift folded and crashed. Fortunately, no one was hurt. During that evening, the senior members of the department responded to the scene.
The Chief of the Department Alain Michaud immediately made the decision to withdraw from service temporarily the twelve other Bronto SkyLifts. The remaining vehicles will be inspected prior to returning to service.
An investigation into the accident is underway. The Boom SkyLift is still in the garage and the department is expecting specialists from Europe to come and investigate further, said Claudette Lalonde, Montreal Fire Department Public Information Officer.
Other aerial devices are being redeployed to cover the districts normally served by the vehicles which have been taken out of service.
E-ONE Assisting in InvestigationE-ONE is in the process of sending a technical team to Montreal to assist in determining the reason for the boom collapse.
Bronto Skylift from Finland manufactures the boom assembly that was involved in the Montreal incident. Emergency One is a worldwide designer, manufacturer and marketer of fire rescue vehicles with headquarters in Ocala, Florida. E-ONE now owns Bronto and imports the boom for assembly in the North America.
Brian Cardinal, Vice President of Engineering for E-ONE said that a team should be in Montreal by Monday to try and find out what happened. This assembly was 14 to 15 years old but that is not an issue he said. This is the first incident like this that he knows of.
E-ONE did not own Bronto Skylift when this apparatus was assembled and sold to Montreal and so they are without particular design drawings in this case, Cardinal said. "But we are in this together to make sure we find the answers. The good thing is that no one got hurt."
Vice President of Marketing, Livingstone Treumann, said information from the investigation will be available as soon as it is completed.
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