antiquefirelt

NY Roof Hook

This is the NY Roof hook if it is the all aircraft steel model with the pry end. With the FG shaft it's the All Purpose Hook. The combination roof hook has the NY end wit the Boston rake at the other end.

Our new TL carries:

4-6' NY roof hooks

2-8' all purpose hooks

2-6' Boston rakes (Boston jake rack?)

1-6' San Francisco hook

1-6' Eckert Hook

2-14' New Yorker tipped FG pike poles

2-10' New Yorker tipped FG pike poles

2-8' New Yorker tipped FG pike poles

1-36" Griff Hook (NY Roof hook with strap)

Badges and bugles do not command respect and followers. You still must earn your firefighters trust. Think before acting on personnel matters, often you only get one side of the story and jumping to act and needing to recant will undermine your respect and authority. Being and officer is a huge responsibility, truly, peoples lives are affected by your decisions, if you don't know something ask!

So aqt what point can't the chief go in? What if he's the first to arrive along with poorly staffed engine? Or how about a well staffed company? Is the officer in charge the IC until relieved? Does he go in? While we all know the seniormost or best trained person should be in command outside, this business is very dynamic and cannot have an absolute rule as: Chiefs never go in.

TPWS: Trust me I didn't mean or believe that you can't fight fires with fog nozzles. All said and done, I'm sure more fire is extinguished each day by fog nozzles. I just think we need to try and dispel some of the myths in this age old debate. As has been stated quality firefighters and good leadership make the fire go out better than any one tool.

I know one thing for a fact and that is there have been numerous occassions in FDNY where they had to switch over to fog nozzles in Standpipe Jobs because of the amount of fire blowing down the hallway at them.

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WHAT????? More fire requires more water, not more psi! Fighting with fog in this situation would be like climbing down the breach of a loaded gun. Please provide something to back up this claim. I have yet to hear anyone from the FDNY say they would ever use a fog nozzle off a standpipe. Using fog on a standpipe requires a low pressure nozzle, unless you specifically buy them, fog as are not low pressure!

Don't wait until a strong wind is creating blast like furnace conditions in the hallway on the 20th fl. to call for a fog nozzle or tip to attach to the smooth bore. It's too late my BROTHERS.

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Whats the pressure on the standpipe at the 20th floor anyway? Hows the TFT gonna work at 40 psi? Trust me, it'll look good, but looks aren't everything.

Personally, I like having the option of switching to a narrow fog or even a wider fog pattern if need be.

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What would the need be? Ever watched the fog nozzle on a LPG fire attack? The vortex created sucks the heat and flame right up to the nozzle teeth! Or maybe you dip the fog down and the heat and flame comes up over the top and is sucked in by the intense air movement? This can happen in a building too! While fog does have its place (LPG, gas, hairspray) years of misapplication of Lloyd Layman's teachings have done our job a great disservice. It was nover intended for direct attack!

I just hope guys aren't jumping on the FDNY band wagon with regards to smooth bores because that's what the Varsity uses, like some have done with the 10-75 code! Never mind I won't even go there.

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Jumping on the smooth bore band wagon should have nothing to do with anything but "because it works!". So FDNY is the varsity team? I guess I'd agree, you don't make varsity sitting on the bench. Likewise, FDNY uses what works for them, which should work for many others since fire burns the same way in NYC as in Boston or Podunk! Some people need to get rid of their petty jealously of the FDNY guys and realize they do see more fire than most of us and have a much larger R&D effort that can try out new things in actual fire conditions, not the artifical burn room in your concrete trainig tower. Why must we learn all these lessons for ourselves? Can't we learn from each other? Do we have to have LODD's to realize the same tactical issues others have?

Sorry brother but I had to call BS on this one.

Our meters read CO in PPM and % LEL is based on the calibration gas (LPG). Our procedures are very similar to ALS Firefighter's. SCBA on back all the time, don mask at 35 PPM. Occupants warned to leave at 9 PPM, requested to leave >35 PPM. We also bought CO meters for all EMS kits to warn us on the flu-like symptoms. Additionally, we run the new Massimo RAD that reads SPCO!! Very cool! Non-invasive CO/blood readings that the Hospital will believe. This could have convinced the pregnant 19 yoa girl who we made leave her apt. after finding reading over 180 PPM! She didn't want to go to the hospital to be checked out. It took about a half an hour to convince her of the dangers of CO to her and her fetus. With the RAD we could show the level of CO in the blood and made a more convincing arguement.

While we're not in Westchester or NY, our city figures 40% for benefits above salary. As the person responsible for calculating the payroll budget I find this is pretty damn accurate.

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Then you have E-46/L-27 which is below the highway. They are on the service road.

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I know that you can see 46/27 from the Highway(I95). You're looking down at the building on the left (heading south), can just make out the sign over the door and the flag as its close to the highway enough to block the full view from the southbound lane.

I have a bunch of info that we used to present to our council and taxpayers regarding the benefits of a tower vs. stick. Why we needed one in the 100 ft. range vs. 75 ft. Your welcome to it, just send me your email or PM me with it.

We also put together a preformance spec package and tested all demo units for our needs on our streets. They all had to make certain corners and hills to ensure we could get it around. We measured the distance from the body of the truck to the leading edge of the bucket when it was within 6" of the ground at 90 degrees to the body. We requested wall to wall turning radius's. We measured setup time, max and mim. footprint. Over height and length were factors, as was angle of departure and "tailslap" (mid-mount). The bucket had to have a lip around the three leading sides and max. sq. footage was measured. of course it could have nothing that would prevent us from working off the lip to vent or otherwise keep weight on the bucket vs. the building. This killed the Sutphen for us as they hadn't released the new SP100 with flat bottom.

We ended up with city coucilor who headed a fundraising program that garnered $200K+ so the taxpayers were able to save a little dough. This does not come without serious skeptisism but we're taking delivery of a new tower next month, so hopefully all's well that ends well.

I appreciate the remedial education,my orriginal post was regarding the quality of Sutphen....when I go to work the two horns on my collar suggest "this isnt my first rodeo"......Capt T

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No offense intended Capt, just a few of posts regarding 70 ft. and buildinging heights and no one mentioning there's more to an aerial's length than building height.

From the scuttlebut around there maybe new generation of Metz coming that addresses some of the issues we American jakes have with their trucks? While I'm not much of a Metz fan, they seem to fill a niche, of which your situation may fall within. I know we ran a Sutphen Tower as a temp truck for about a year and one thing we hated was the protrusion undert the bucket, which only one of their 100 ft. models is without. It makes it impossible to cut the roof without being on it. Also you have to be close to straight on to windows for rescue as their buckets have one center door in a flat faced bucket. We were also not impressed with the finish quality of the new Sutphens, when we were speccing our new tower last year.

I've got to say, I firmly believe that video can be a great training tool. Properly done to record responses without affecting anyone's responsibility to the response, I think that you can show good driving habits vs. poor habits. Filming the scene provides invaluable documentation of the conditions on arrival and fire progression or hopefully regression. We are fortuneate enought o have a dept. photographer who takes stills at almost every run (not EMS) but moving to video would be a huge benefit for training. And if you're scared what will be caught on tape, then you're already wrong!

All our footage has been shot from a dash mounted cam. In the future we hope to install multiple fixed cameras for taping the response, the scene and the crowd.

I can't help but point out that height is not the only consideration on choosing aerial length, especially with a tower. Setback distance is a major factor. A 3-story building's roof may be inaccessible if it is far from the street.

What's up with the Interspiro SCBA??

While we are it what about an automatic stabilizer for aerials like once you get out push one button the stabilizers come down with the steel plates already welded to the stabilizers

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This too has been done. Well maybe not oversized plates, but KME has one button deployable jacks. I've yet to hear anyone who has them say they work well though. I think a few others have this option also.

What about chocks that put themselves down automatically? 

Now there's something for someone to invent!

Thanks again for the lessons which are always in the front of my mind going to runs.

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Done! I saw them the other day when we got an oil delivery at home. The truck had front and rear hydraullically deployed chocks on the drivers side, as well as On Spot chains. I figure our oil dealer now considers home fuel oil "precious cargo".

I strongly suggest that you hire an apparatus consultant to assist you.  Especially since this is a new piece of apparatus that you haven't designed before. 

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Already done. Mike Wilbur was excellant on our tower and is already assisting greatly with this. We've learned the hard way that we don't buy enough trucks to spec things right the first, second, or third time. Having been part of the spec/purchase committee in both vol. and career depts. I've worked on a handful of specs and learned more from Mike in 2 hrs than I could have imagined. Given what I've seen I'm sure East West is an excellant resource as well and echo the fact that many departments probably could use a consultant.

OK so it looks like 2-3 of us will be travelling to the NY-NJ-PA area the week of Sept. 25th. We have to be in Ephrata, PA for a mid-inspection of the new Tower on Tuesday. Hopefully this Mon I'll have a better handle on what apparatus we are really wanting to see, so we can make some contacts. I know Pleasantville R47 and Thornwood R75 are on the must see list.

Does anyone know if Yonkers Squad 11 or New Rochelle Squad 22 carry "Jaws" type tools?

Thanks for the help. Lots of good leads and contacts here. We're trying to schedule a trip for mid to late September to take a look at many of these rescue/pumpers. This is a great start. As I said, we pretty much know what we want, but want to hear from those who have and use them what works, what doesn't and "what we should have done was..."

We are looking to do the same thing in Elmsford and in addition to looking at the rigs that you mention; we are considering the consultation services of Mike Wilbur and Tom Shand "The Apparatus Architects" from www.firehouse.com.

We attended their session in Baltimore and found it very enlightening.

I hope this helps.

Syd Henry

Elmsford FD

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We used Mike and Tom for our tower specs and we've spoken to Mike extensively on this project. I highly recommend their services, we learned alot that we didn't even know we didn't know.

Our department is writing specs for our new Rescue Pumper. This will be a first for us as we've run separate peices until now, but space and long-term cost of ownership has us consolidating.

I am looking for dept's in the Westchester/Rockland/Orange Co. area as well as southern Ct. that have rescue pumpers that a few of us could come take a look at. For our purposes I'll list some of the musts that ours will have:

1250 or greater pump

650 gal. tank

hydraulic rescue tools system (preconnected tools)

engine and truck Co. hand and power tools

light tower

10K + generator

4-6 man cab

Other factors we're considering: low hose bed wanted, as short as possible, possibly CAFS, as mush compartment space as possible.

Here's a short list of units I gleened from this site:

Pleasantville Rescue 47

Washingtonville 583

West Harrison Rescue 35

New Rochelle Squad 22

Yonkers Squad 11

Goshen E-931

Orange Lake 329

Thornwood R75

Spring Valley Rescue 17

Nanuet ?

Anyone else have such an animal? We're looking to make a trip in late September.

Thanks

I believe the new ALF 110 footer may have the narrowest jack spread now. Something like 12'? Pretty sweet on narrow streets with no learning curve for depts not using tillers currently.

Not that we all don't ahve opinions on what we've seen, but get some first hand info before making any decision. We're replacing our aerail with new 93' ALF mid-mount. This after tons of homework and a three day whirlwind tour of mid-mount users in the NY, CT and MA. One thisng's for sure: talk to the firefighters that use the truck. Not the Chief's who bought them.

Again, these were just observations we heard from line firefighters on their mid-mount towers:

KME: only saw one, lots of nightmares.

E-One: 5 of 6 users unhappy and said stay away

Peirce: 4 (of 6) users had electronics issues resulting in damage or locking up of aerial

Sutphen: didn't even look, the bucket is detrimental to good tactical uses. Had one to use for a year, didn't like.

ALF: most (6 of 6) were happy except minor issues with door switches.

Seagrave/Scope: (sung by Eddie Murphy)"we can't afford it, we can't afford it, we can't afford it" Little to no bad remarks from users. Cost to great to be realistic.

No one else met our specs for sole-source or minimum number of trucks in service.

We're getting ready to do another "tour" for our new Rescue Pumper. I highly recommend this as you see many innovations, some are great others don't work as well. Also, you can aniticpate issues and learn from other mistakes.

Unless you're actually doing a presentation with alot of graphics (non-photo) and alot of text, there are better programs for this. Windows movie maker allows you to add music and adjust the slides to where the music starts/stops/transitions. It also allows for titles, credit and text slides to be inserted. I think it is a cheap download or comes with many camera software packages.

I can't believe what I am seeing here. Having the best looking rigs and getting the best marks for marching makes for a better department?? That is the biggest bunch of BS I have ever heard. Training is boring?? That training just may save someones life, maybe even your own.

My hat is off to this poor guy who has his prioirties in the right place. It's too bad the ignorant and the dinosaurs in his department are giving him such a hard time.

Parades should not be mandatory for any member unless your department is the one hosting it.

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I couldn't agree more. All I can say is that having rules and enforcing them is good, as many vol. dept.s tend to ignore most. But stupid rules? If parades are the mainstay of your dept. then the taxpayers are getting the shaft. Do us a favor and stop hurting the rest of the fire service with these retarded ideas. I'll bet all the shiny rigs, and marching practice makes for a bunch of OUT STANDING firefighters!!