BIRTH OF A FIRE APPARATUS
Researching, specifying, purchasing, and overseeing the construction of an apparatus is analogous to pregnancy and birth, a fact to which anyone who has undergone the process can attest. The gestation period of the City of New York (NY) Fire Department’s pumper delivered last October, the first of a total order of 100 such 1,000-gpm pumpers, was much longer than nine months. It began back in 1989, shortly after the delivery of our last order of pumpers.
The responsibility of an apparatus committee, whether formal or informal, is enormous. In a department such as FDNY, we are fortunate to be able to devote more time and effort to the task than can members of smaller departments. In addition, we are able to use the specifications from our last group of vehicles (only a few years ago) as a starting point. That doesn’t mean this year’s pumper will look just like last year’s —indeed, there are enormous differences between them—but it at least gives us a place to begin, an advantage many committees usually do not have.
In addition, our committee consists of senior fire department staff officers, budget and safety personnel, line officers, firefighters, and mechanical staff. The resources these people bring to the process are formidable. This tremendous pool of assistance is never more than a phone call or, in most cases, a short walk away.
On the other hand, we do face unique difficulties. As I mentioned, this particular project began in 1989. Three years may sound like an inordinate amount of time, given our resources, but anyone who has ever dealt with the tangled web of bureaucracy in a major city can tell you that it is never easy, and it is always timeconsuming.
STARTING POINT
The aspect of apparatus purchasing in New York City that some find hard to believe is that the process of specifying regular firefighting vehicles, such as pumpers and aerials, begins not with the firefighter but with the mechanics who repair the vehicles. Most people assume the process starts with the firefighter. Yes, the vehicle will be used in fire suppression, but it does no one any good if it remains in the shop for extended periods of timedue to failure caused by improper construction or a repair job madecomplicated and protracted by inaccessible components and faulty materials.
The object hereis to have the* apparatus in the repair shop as infrequently as possible and, when it does go in, to get it out as quickly as possible. If this objective is met, it will lead to a drastic reduction in vehicle downtime, allowing the department to reduce the number of spare apparatus it must maintain for availability when first-line units are being repaired. Such maintenance is a constant drain on ever-diminishing fire department budgets.
The required information is collected, sorted, and assimilated into the specification. Any eligible bidders can attend a prebid meeting during which the entire spec is read and open for comment. Based on this exchange, the spec may be changed to ensure that legitimate vendors are not excluded from bidding and that the spec as written will help us realize the best bang for the buck. Then the paperwork is forwarded to the city’s Department of General Services, which conducts the actual bidding process and issues the purchase order to the lowest bidder.
It is then that the real work begins. No one —no matter how knowledgeable—can read a specification and determine the purchaser’s precise desires—the volume of words is simply too huge. The manufacturer with which we were dealing had built our entire aerial fleet but had not delivered a pumper to New York City for almost 60 years. The company’s repair experience with aerials might not translate into knowledge of the type and frequency of pumper repairs caused by the exceptionally hard use our vehicles undergo. We therefore decided to set up a series of preconstruction meetings with the manufacturer’s engineering staff to discuss exactly what we had in mind when preparing the specifications and how these ideas differed from the perceptions their engineers had developed from reading the same specifications.
The meetings were held with their plumbing and electrical supervisors; chassis and body engineers; piping design personnel; and. once at the plant, the actual construction mechanics on the assembly line —all in an effort to ensure we covered as many bases as possible before the first, or “pilot model,” pumper was constructed. Once the meetings were concluded and construction was begun, two trips were made to the plant to verify’ the changes made at planning meetings and to try to pick up some others, to facilitate the operational characteristics of the pumper and its maintenance and repair when completed.
ADDRESSING ELECTRICAL CONCERNS
Our aim was to all but eliminate the severe electrical problems we have been encountering for years in apparatus, an area that some manufacturers apparently have simply ignored. After springs and brakes, they are our number one repair headache. While some of the causes of these problems can be attributed to a combination of the manufacturers’ poor electrical wiring and the road salts used by the city during snowstorms, another cause is firefighters who insist on wiring additional lights, mechanical sirens, and so on into the system, causing overloads, short circuits, and sometimes wiring harness fires in the vehicles.
To address the problem, we started with the harnesses used to route the wires through the body and the chassis. The split loom plastic harness used as most manufacturers’ standard was replaced with a sealed conduittype of harness, and we specified that all exposed wiring be routed either in this type of harness or made inaccessible behind steel panels. A single common ground wire was specified, to attempt to eliminate the mass of ground wires common to some vehicles. The fuse panels were moved to equally inaccessible areas, behind partitions in the body, to prevent tampering; and the main wiring panel in the cab was locked with two special locks, the keys to which would be given only to our mechanics.
You might think that all our problems would be solved by these extraordinary efforts, but since nothing excites a firefighter’s imagination more than a challenge, the department since has issued an order that any tampering with the electrical systems on these apparatus would lead to charges of misconduct against the unit commander. In addition, any lights, sirens, and so on wired into the system would be removed and confiscated.
BRAKES
If you were to ask any maintenance manager to identify the biggest repair headache, the answer surely would be, “Brakes!” We are no exception. We’re always looking for ways to reduce our workload in that area. On our new pumpers, we installed an electromagnetic retarder. The retarder is connected in four stages, which can be adjusted to suit the user’s needs. We requested that two of the stages be activated when the driver’s foot is released from the accelerator and the other two when the brake pedal is hit. Since the natural tendency during responses is to go from full acceleration to full braking, we felt that activating the retarder only upon depression of the brake pedal would be ineffective—by the time the retarder activated, the driver would be “through” the retarder portion of the pedal and into the service brake, thereby negating the retarder’s full effect.
We specified that a retarder be mounted as an integral part of the rear axle housing, recognizing that the combination axle would be a particularly important feature for a pumper that typically uses a split-shaft pump, which reduces the driveline space available for retarder positioning.
Since we use disc brakes exclusively (and are aware of the attendant higher costs), we are interested to see the effects of this feature and will cross-check our records at the end of our first year of retarder use to determine cost-effectiveness.
INCREASING STORAGE SPACE
Another problem we faced w as the ever-increasing complement of tools and equipment issued to engine companies and the diminishing amount of available compartment space within which to store them. Over the past year, in addition to the normal engine company tools required, we have issued complete CPR responder kits, infectious disease control kits, special hydrant wrenches to combat the open hydrant problem in our city, and a myriad of other items.
BIRTH OF FIRE APPARATUS
We attempted to address this problem with our last order of pumpers by removing the portable ladder from the upper right side of the body and placing it on a hydraulic rack over the hosebed. This allowed us two additional compartments on that side of the body. In addition, we had redesigned the hosebed to allow the construction of two upper compartments on the left side of the body. This design led to a great deal of frustration, and we decided to change it to allow better hose-carrying capability. Going back to the old hosebed design, however, meant using the old vertical-style booster tank design, which eliminated half the depth of the lower compartments at the front of the body. The ultimate compromise was to change the tank design to the “coffin”-type, fitted under the hosebed without protruding into the compartments and reducing available space. While this meant raising the height of the hosebed, we believed that the slight increase would not affect operations, since the length of the hosebed grew from its previous six feet to 10 feet; therefore, the hose would not be stacked as high as it formerly had been.
Once this change could be examined, other beneficial features came to light. The fact that we were going from a tank that lay across the width of the vehicle to one installed lengthwise meant that the pumper’s vertical center of gravity would be lowered dramatically, allowing two very important things to take place. First, the weight of the water and the 500gallon fiberglass tank (approximately 5,000 pounds) now would be located squarely over the rear axle, greatly reducing the “fishtailing” effect common to pumpers, particularly on slightly wet road surfaces, thereby reducing the possibility of skids when rounding corners.
Second, although no one likes to think of them, accidents involving fire apparatus do occur, and pumpers that are hit broadside tend to flip over onto their sides. Lowering the center of gravity by placing this 5,000 pounds down lower on the vehicle meant that a vehicle hitting the apparatus broadside w’ould have to lift the additional weight to topple the pumper. In addition, the possibility of the pumper’s flipping over on its own after sliding sideways and striking a curb, something I have witnessed in this city, was rendered very remote.
PUMP ACCESSIBILITY
Next, we addressed accessibility to the pump and piping area and reducing or eliminating the piping problems of the past. Previously, when it was necessary to change a valve, much of the piping had to be removed, turning a one-hour job into a fourto five-hour job. This time we decided to use all “swingout”-type, flange-mounted valves. When replacement or rebuilding is required, the mechanic simply removes four bolts on each flange, and the entire valve “swings” out for repair. We used a flange-mounted relief valve on the discharge side of the pump, instead of the piped-in version of the past, to allow for quicker rebuilding and seat replacement.
(Photos by author.)
BIRTH OF FII APPARATUS
In addition to these changes, the pump enclosure was modified to include access doors on both sides of the pump panel and even on top (to allow access to gauges, flowmeters, and so forth). At the same time, the piping to the top-mounted deck gun was changed from pipe to high-pressure rubber hose, due to our experience with the piping between the gun and the pump body sometimes breaking off at the pump flange-mount due to road vibration.
CHASSIS/BODY CONCERNS
Chassis and body construction and the method of their attachment to the frame have been found to be extremely important to us, due to the condition of many of the city’s roads. Improperly attaching the body to the frame can cause rapid deterioration of the body by virtue of its being constantly pounded by the infinitely stronger frame rails, which leads to cracking of compartment flooring, body sides, hosebed dividers, and other necessary body parts. Having the entire pump panel assembly constructed as an independent unit, as opposed to its being integrated into the hosebed body, was seen as one way to avoid this stressful condition.
Excessive twisting of the frame occurs at the pump panel directly behind the cab. Should this area be connected tightly to the rest of the body, the result could be severe stress on what is basically sheet metal, leading to rapid deterioration of the entire body. We installed separate expansion joints between the different sections of the truck to overcome the mounting problems.
CAB AND CREW AREA
The next important area was the cab and crew area. We were concerned with a number of goals, including reduced noise and heat, increased ease of accessibility to SCBA, better communication between front and rear sections, and ease of maintenance, since this also is the engine compartment.
We accomplished many of our goals by aggressively attacking the noise and heat factors through a greatly enhanced insulation package, which consists of a lead-lined closed cell foam with a heavy-duty rubber backing applied to the interior of the entire crew cab area and around the engine enclosure. In addition, we applied insulation against heat to the interior of the engine enclosure, to form a complete package of protection against both these elements. One additional effect of these specifications was better communications between the front and rear crew areas, by virtue of the drastically reduced noise levels the package provided. We also removed the siren and air horn from the front cowl and placed them inside the front bumper to reduce noise backfeed into the cab.
SPECIFYING SAFETY
We addressed safety as part of the total design, not as one particular portion of the planning process. Safety is a small word with unbelievably varied interpretations. Whenever someone is dissatisfied with something, all that person has to do to gain attention is brand that particular object or practice “unsafe.” While we had had no particular complaints that our previous apparatus were unsafe, we nevertheless were attempting to make this the safest pumper the department had ever devised. We specified a better, more effective lighting system than before, including all halogen bulbs for increased visibility and brightness; reflective striping and lettering on all four sides of the vehicle; three-way seat belts for all forwardfacing seats; and the addition of reflective stop signs on the interiors of all cab doors, so that the open apparatus doors would reflect the headlights of cars bearing down on them from the rear, thus protecting firefighters.
Another safety feature we included was vSCBA brackets mounted into the rear of all the cab and crew cab seats. In the past, these brackets were mounted only behind the two rearfacing seats, while the other two crew cab masks and the officer’s mask were mounted on pole-type brackets alongside the officer and above the engine compartment. We found that this positioning led to numerous sprain and strain injuries (with a concomitant increase in medical leave) caused by reaching over either to remove or replace the masks.
Incorporating the brackets into the crew and officer seats meant lengthening the wheelbase of the vehicle by approximately eight inches. However, we felt this small change was an acceptable compromise to accomplish so much.
The next safety area we addressed was the location of discharge outlets on the rig. Two three-inch-diameter discharges were placed, one on the curb-side pump panel and one on the rear of the vehicle. This way, there was little or no danger of the operator’s being struck by a flying largediameter hose butt, should a length burst, or by a loose line under pressure.
BIRTH OF FIRE APPARATTS
We hope to reduce the number of discharges on the pump panel in the future but not to eliminate them all, as some quarters have suggested. Our experience has been that on occasion, the pump operator has had to have a line ready to protect that position and the apparatus from exposure to the fire, which makes it handy to have the discharge outlet right there at the panel.
We also specified that the pump panel be altered with color-coded tags identifying all the various operating handles, outlets and inlets, gauges, and drain valves, to allow someone not entirely familiar with the apparatus to operate the pump safely. We routinely balance department personnel by detailing members from unit to unit for a tour, sometimes to act as pump operators, and it is expected that this will facilitate their jobs when detailed to a unit with one of these new pumpers.
After this was accomplished, the manufacturer thought it had satisfied its part of the bargain —the manufacturer was wrong! We subject every pumper delivered to a seven-hour pump test from draft before final acceptance. The test includes pumping 250 gpm at 600 psi for six hours. If anything is to go wrong with the pumper, we want it to happen at the test site —not at a fire scene. The tests showed that adjustments were needed. These minor problems were easily corrected, but they would have presented a major problem had they occurred on the fireground.
All of this effort is what ultimately led to the acceptance and deliver of this new generation of FDNY pumper. Will it be rejected by some quarters? Absolutely—the pumper has yet to be born that is suitable for use in all 210 engine companies working in such diverse areas as Wall Street, the South Bronx, the quiet residential sections of Staten Island, Eastern Queens, and the East New York area of Brooklyn. If we didn’t accomplish this goal, however, it sure wasn’t for lack of trying!
