Fire Engines Photos

Roger, without a doubt one of the best photos I have had the pleasure to view on this site, no words needed to describe this pic!! A band of comrades if ever I saw one, and the wheeled escape has made this picture absolutely perfect!! Thanks from Perth, Western Australia,,

Added by Pavel on 11 January 2010.

Proto B.A. sets, very uncomfortable to wear with the mouth gag and nose clips, however they were very efficient and would last for ages....the standard set was 1 hour nominal and in the case of entrapment procedure they could be made to seek out a supply of breathable air for several hours !!!!
We had 2 hour sets for ship fires.
Yes a fantastic photograph...thanks for sharing Roger

Added by Barrie Green on 11 January 2010.

Fantastic picture are these Proto set the same as would be used by Mines Rescue if so a good link as below: www.colsal.org.uk/sites/lancashireminesrescue/PROTOBREATHINGAPPARATUS.asp

Added by Paul Crichton on 11 January 2010.

a fantastic photo of a BA team awaiting deployment. How technology has come on though our sets are only 30 min sets unlike these proto 1 hour sets. I noted NO Flash Hoods either!!!

Added by Stevie Murray on 11 January 2010.

Mines Rescue used 2 hour Proto's and also 'Aerolox' BAs which used liquid oxygen......I remember visiting the Mines Rescue Station at Boothstown in th late 1960s

Added by Barrie Green on 11 January 2010.

Yes indeed Barrie , Those cream & green rescue tenders Bedfords , very similar to the Albion Salvage the MFB ran last time I saw one of these was outside a house in Bredbury on the Stockport to Bredbury rd not far from Vernon Park

Added by Paul Crichton on 12 January 2010.

Just a bit more info on this BA crew. They would appear to be the crew of Lambeth's (D61) Emergency Tender (E.T.) They would have been wearing the yellow sets only carried on the LFB E.T.s. I wore a 'yellow set' on many occasions when I was a Sub. Officer on East Ham's (L21)E.T. in the seventies. No we didn't have flash hoods, but our ears were very good temperature gauges. When they started to get too hot you were probably 'in' too far!!! LFB training in Proto use was superb. We had total confidence in those BA sets, but they were very time consuming when they had to be serviced after use, especially at 0300hrs!

Added by Murray Beale on 12 January 2010.

Roger,
What a picture!! reflecting everything by the faces and the black and white magic!
Many thanks for sharing
Cheers
JP

Added by Jacques Peter on 13 January 2010.

see picture 19412 for mines rescue vehicle.

Added by Peter Williams on 13 January 2010.

I'd agree with everything Murray says about the proto set - old fashioned but excellent sets ! I trained on the Mark 5 set (facemask instead of goggles noseclip and mouthpiece) when we carried 8 of them on our ET at Scunthorpe in the late 1970's - very time consuming to service ( and highly technical - NOT !) part of the after use test was blow the breathing bag up and put a weight on it usually a BA servicing spanner - sight it against an immovable object and see if the bag deflated ! the main downside was they were not positive pressure sets though ! you also had to purge the system before wearing them - come to think of it our oxygen compressor was almost as antiquated !

Added by Rick Loudon on 13 January 2010.

Roger,

Thanks for the photo, it's brilliant! I remember thta I saw some set still in use with the Tasmanian Fire rvice at Launceston fire station way back in 1986. When I was in the rescue team in Rotterdam; Holland we had long duration sets (basicly the same concept)from Draeger. Now we can wear "double air" which mean two cylinders of air instead of one.
Murray, I like your LFb memories too to read.

Cheers,
Frank

Added by Fire995 on 16 January 2010.

Back in 1969 that's all we had. But knowing how they worked, being able to take one apart completely and then reassemble, gave confidence in their performance. Would they let you adjust the flow these days? Happy days at Lambeth riding the ET.

Added by James Taylor on 10 November 2011.

I must agree with James, happy days indeed. The London E.T.s were busy machines. I did nearly 11 years on the ET at East Ham and they included some of the best days of my career. We were pretty busy back in the seventies, with major jobs on a regular basis. 2 ETs were ordered on to all fires of 8 pumps and above, so there was plenty of firefighting and BA use. Then there were the RTAs (Road Traffic Accidents), Chemical Incidents, train crashes and Underground Train accidents. We were certainly kept busy. There were only 6 ETs covering the whole of London in those days. On one particular incident, a train crash at Croydon in south London, we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw 5 of the 6 ETs at one shout! Yes, those were the days!

Added by Murray Beale on 12 November 2011.

I think LFB operates around ten FRUs these days, but with only four or five crew instead of the six or seven who rode the old ETs years ago.

It seems several British brigades have done away entirely with these types of appliances, now that hydraulic rescue kit is compact enough to fit into a pump.

Does LFB run rescue pumps too nowadays, or are the FRUs still relied on to respond to all rescue and RTA calls?

Here in the US where I live now the concept of a dedicated heavy rescue truck with a six man crew is still pretty much universal, although many ladder trucks and an increasing number of pumpers are also carrying hydraulic extrication gear these days.

Long duration CA sets have ultra high pressure cylinders, and are usually issued to Rescue Companies and/or carried on dedicated specials, either Air Support and/or Hi-Rise Units. It is also SOP to carry four spare cylinders for the 30" sets on all pumpers and aerials, except for brush units.

Added by Rob Johnson on 17 August 2017.

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