Pump operators
“Modern Day Pump Operators: Doing More with Less” (October 2012) was very informative. I am a career firefighter with a department in middle Georgia. We have roughly 110 people in suppression. We tend to have only three people on a truck at a time. We primarily use five-inch large-diameter hose for water supply with a hydrant pack attached for looping the hydrant. The second-in truck then catches the hydrant. When I am the driver, I instruct the firefighters that I will loop the hydrant: Either the lieutenant or I are the first to see the hydrant, and it reduces fatigue for the firefighter and doesn’t tire him out before pulling a line and fighting the fire.
Kevin Kendrick
Firefighter
Warner Robins, Georgia
TV show as historical record?
I was watching the TV show Emergency the other day not for tactical tips or for “how-to” advice but kind of as an “historical document.” The show may be hokey, but that was the fire service in the mid- and early 1970s. That was my fire service. We did not always wear our masks; we kept them in their suitcases on top of the apparatus. All self-contained breathing apparatus bottles were 2216 and made of steel. Our rope was ¾-inch manila hemp, and our safety gear was a ladder belt around our waist. My “first” turnout gear was a canvas coat and an MSA Top Guard helmet. My “bunker” pants were called “speeders” or night pants and were reserved for use in the bunkroom at night. You could tell what kind of rig it was by what it looked like.
The series aired 41 years ago. What other TV show has made the fire service and our emergency management service look so good for almost half a century?
Getting back to the “historical document,” I heard Captain Stanley (Michael Norell) issue orders that I have not heard for more than 35 years. Some firefighters have never heard them and may not even know what he is talking about! Most of the time, it is a good thing. We no longer practice what he ordered. What I heard were the following orders:
- “Pull a 1½-inch.” I haven’t heard that since most departments switched to 1¾-inch and call them generically “preconnects.”
- “Lay duals.” I haven’t heard that command since I was a backstep firefighter in Muscatine, Iowa. We were going to a working garage fire. Captain Barnhart leaned out the window of Engine 3 and shouted, “Lay duals,” and held up two fingers. Too bad we were in the wrong alley! I made the hookup as ordered. I watched with dread as Engine 3 went down the alley and into the next, laying two 2½-inch supply lines-600 feet of hose. All I could think about was the poor firefighter (me) who was going to have to roll, pick up, wash, and hang all that hose! With the advent of large-diameter hose, laying duals has become a past practice.
- “Pull a reel line, Marco.” We didn’t call them “reel lines” but rather booster lines or red lines. Thank goodness we have done away with that practice. We have, haven’t we? Ninety-five gallons per minute is not a lot of water, but I pulled my share for car fires, trash fires, dumpsters-and, in Muscatine, house fires.
- “Wash down that gas!” I’m glad we don’t do that anymore either. I shudder to think how much environmental damage we did washing gasoline and diesel fuel down the storm drain.
As ridiculous as it may be, it was how we were in the 1970s.
Rick Fritz
Battalion Chief of Special Projects (Ret.)
High Point, North Carolina
Suicide article
Thanks to Fire Engineering for having the courage to publish “A Firefighter’s Silent Killer: Suicide” by Paul J. Antonellis Jr. and Denise Thompson in the December 2012 issue.
Patrick J. Kenny
Chief, Director of Fire and EMS
Fire Engineering Archives
