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No: 34737 Contributor: Marcel Sloover Year: 2012 Manufacturer: American LaFrance Country: United States of America
In the mid 80s and later booster reels were considered "passé" and replaced with lager diameter flat hose. Also if you look closely at the photo you will see 2 semi-ridged lines above the pump panel going to the hose bed. These come from the old booster connections. When I was a CFO we did the same thing on our ALF engine. This gave us two additional 1.5 inch pre connected lines for firefighting. Thus more water to the fire since booster reels were only 30 - 60 gpm and the 1.5 lines were 95 - 100 gpm each.
Added by John Harris on 21 May 2013.
Added by John Harris on 21 May 2013.
Thanks John - another minor mystery solved!
I guess a pair of valved T pieces could have done the same job, feeding an added 1.5 or 1.75 inch preconnect in the main bed, while still leaving the boosters in place for small jobs. This department does not seem to be using the "found" space resulting from deleting the reels for any other useful purpose.
My old department, Manhasset-Lakeville VFD, modified one of our Ward La France engines around 1985 in a similar way, but by simply winding the 1.5 inch round the old booster reel. I never saw it used, but I expect it worked!
The reels' big advantage is that they deploy and rewind very fast, and now they can handle very high pressures, but some european departments do seem to rely very heavily on them - perhaps even sometimes too much! I once saw the Italian VdF unroll a reel as SOP #1 at a fire at a lumber yard which quite obviously needed mutiple attack lines out of the box, and the crew then had quite a long arguement about what to do next.
LA county still uses booster reels, but LA city dropped them long ago in favor of multiple crosslays in different sizes. The reels are very useful on brush fires, of which there is no shortage in Southern California, partly because they can be moved around easily - and even rewound and the engine repositioned very quickly if needed.
The small crosslay is argueably just as good in wildland conditions, particularly if it is unlined, but takeup time is quite lengthy, especially if the CAFS foam has to be washed off first! I recently saw LA city working a grass fire on I 405 just north of I 10, and it took far less time to extinguish the fire than it did to wash and repack the crosslay.
Added by Rob Johnson on 22 May 2013.
I guess a pair of valved T pieces could have done the same job, feeding an added 1.5 or 1.75 inch preconnect in the main bed, while still leaving the boosters in place for small jobs. This department does not seem to be using the "found" space resulting from deleting the reels for any other useful purpose.
My old department, Manhasset-Lakeville VFD, modified one of our Ward La France engines around 1985 in a similar way, but by simply winding the 1.5 inch round the old booster reel. I never saw it used, but I expect it worked!
The reels' big advantage is that they deploy and rewind very fast, and now they can handle very high pressures, but some european departments do seem to rely very heavily on them - perhaps even sometimes too much! I once saw the Italian VdF unroll a reel as SOP #1 at a fire at a lumber yard which quite obviously needed mutiple attack lines out of the box, and the crew then had quite a long arguement about what to do next.
LA county still uses booster reels, but LA city dropped them long ago in favor of multiple crosslays in different sizes. The reels are very useful on brush fires, of which there is no shortage in Southern California, partly because they can be moved around easily - and even rewound and the engine repositioned very quickly if needed.
The small crosslay is argueably just as good in wildland conditions, particularly if it is unlined, but takeup time is quite lengthy, especially if the CAFS foam has to be washed off first! I recently saw LA city working a grass fire on I 405 just north of I 10, and it took far less time to extinguish the fire than it did to wash and repack the crosslay.
Added by Rob Johnson on 22 May 2013.
American LaFrance
Can anyone help explain this modification? I can't figure it out, unless for some reason the department relocated the reels to the rear step.
Added by Rob Johnson on 21 May 2013.