FE Volume 132 Issue 4

It hardly seems all that long ago since Fire Engineering published its first articles on extra-large-diameter hose, but it must have been at least 10 years. So it was interesting to read the article on page 27 that was written for us by Wesley L. Melo, who is the training officer of the Huntsville, Texas, Volunteer Fire Department.

In a recent issue of Fire Engineering, Chief Elmer Chapman of the New York City Fire Department had an interesting article relative to the type and selection of smoke alarms. Since that article 1 have noted a plethora of TV advertising of smoke alarms that have a light installed.

No matter what scientific mumbo-jumbo was used to justify it, the manning level for a fire company has traditionally been arrived at “by guess and by God.” More recently the manning level has been arrived at by the amount of money available to pay the fire fighters. Neither method is, of course, satisfactory. With this in mind, what in your opinion, and for your department, is the proper manning level for a ladder company and an engine company? And how many men do you run on each piece? B.J. McCarrel, Chief, Casper, Wyo.:

The airports in the region of the Port of New York and New Jersey form the world’s greatest civil air complex. Almost 45 million passengers were handled in 1977 by over 800,000 air carrier aircraft movements (over 2000 per day)—a volume of activity that demands the highest achievable level of aircraft crash/fire/rescue capability.