Fire Engines Photos

This early Atego looks pretty good for a twenty year old front line pump...

Added by Rob Johnson on 26 August 2020.

Comment removed at request of Commentor

Appearances can be deceptive, but it certainly looks as if this old lady is being well looked after, and that is what matters if budget constraints prohibit timely replacements. Although the Hilux 4X4 is a great little truck - and amazing durable - I can't help wondering if this too is not a cost-saving effort by the brigade. It seems two pump stations are gradually becoming a thing of the past in the UK, and the second pump is disappearing altogether - as in London - or being replaced by a L4P or TRV...Using older trucks like this has one really important disadvantage, as well as issues of reliability and service availability. Their crews miss out on new technology. Built in items such as CAFS, modern stowage and retrieval systems - and customized stowage for improved portable items like updated hydraulic tools, cold cutters and fognails, and many others which can make their work easier and safer.

Added by Rob Johnson on 27 August 2020.

Andy, I agree about funding problems in some U.K. fire services. My own, WYFRS, has had its budget cut by 20-30 % over the last few years. We have relatively modern appliances, but not many of them! (48 'vehicles' to cover two and a quarter million people in a county with terrible road congestion, and many old buildings such as large mills}. The authority lashed out to purchase a new 32m ALP, but together with 4 CARPs, that's it in the aerial sphere. Meanwhile Leeds has more and more skyscrapers, going higher. The response times have been extended. Fire stations shut.Firefighter numbers halved. All this pre-Covid, so they can't blame that. I think the word shameful applies. I don't want to get party political though. But as you say, in a 'developed' country?

Added by Steve on 27 August 2020.

To be fair to Cornwall they have had L4Ps for a long time. They have a lot of towns and villages with very restricted access.

Added by Neal Glover on 27 August 2020.

Gentlemen - I recently read some of the HM Constabulary and Fire Service Inspectorate's reports about several UK fire brigades. An enormous amount of emphasis was placed on how well each brigade had succeeded in reducing costs, especially cutting headcount, in recent years. Very little was said about the quality of fire coverage, response times, how well major incidents were handled, or any of the other metrics which we see from fire service annual reports in Australia, the US and almost every European country.

As you say, this focus on cutting costs clearly comes from the top, is an obsession, and seems to be pervasive - although as Andy says I am sure some authorities are worse off than others. For example, since 1974, the year of the Worsley Hotel fire so admirably described by Gordon Honeycombe in his book "Red Watch", London has reduced its pump fleet from 212 to 151. Now LFB is studying the idea of reducing around 50 of these to day manning only. They have also cut aerial appliances in the same time frame from 28 to 13, and are currently also evaluating manning the remaining units by switching members of pump crews rather than having dedicated crew members.

The only apparent effort to strengthen resources has been to increase the ET fleet from eight to fourteen, but the total number of FRU personnel remains unchanged at around seventy on each watch. It is one thing to save a few percent of total costs in a given year, and it might arguably even be a good discipline to do this. But if they keep doing it year after year it will eventually inevitably catch up with them.

Added by Rob Johnson on 28 August 2020.

Maybe the reports are not very good but if demand for you services has fallen why would you not reduce numbers? If the number of bins to empty in my area reduced by say 50% I would not expect the council to keep the same number of vehicles and people.

Added by CraigW on 29 August 2020.

Craig: The dilemma is that although the number of fires has fallen, the number of runs has not dropped all that much. This is because of an enormous increase in false alarms - which now outnumber all other runs combined in the UK and many other countries. The root cause is the widespread adoption of automatic fire alarms, which often send out an alarm if and when they malfunction.

Some fire services report that AFAs are 97% false alarms, but fire services in most countries are still obliged to respond to them.

In many countries, including some UK brigades, this problem has been partly solved by sending only two or three crew members to an AFA in a TRV type of vehicle, unless there is good reason to believe there really is a fire. Here in Chicago, the hi rise AFA response is twelve members, including a Batallion Chief, with one engine and one truck. This compares to four engines, two trucks, a rescue, a snorkel, three chiefs and an ambulance for a telephoned alarm. Some countries have introduced heavy fines for false AFA alarms, but this can encourage building owners to disconnect their systems altogether - which is a mixed blessing!

The bin emptying business is relatively predictable. We know pretty much how much we will collect, and we can decide where and when. Figuring out where and when fires might occur is a lot less certain, and predicting how serious they might be is even harder...

Added by Rob Johnson on 30 August 2020.

Rob, I think the fire service business is fairly predictable too TBH . Brigades sorry fire services :) have statistics going back to the year dot as to how many and what incidents there are for each station area.

Added by CraigW on 31 August 2020.

Comment removed at request of Commentor

To further muddy the waters calls tend to be feast or famine. Dead for a period then 2 or 3 makeups in a couple of days even 2 at the same time. Weather conditions seem to play a part. A spate often seems to end with the arrival of a wet spell this seems to include building fires as well. This seems to be the case everywhere.

Added by Neal Glover on 31 August 2020.

Yes, in year dot there were loads of chimney fires. Now there are loads of AFAs.

Added by Rob Johnson on 31 August 2020.

I think I should add that - as the number of fires are tending to be declining in a lot of countries - the UK is not alone in reducing fire coverage in terms of numbers and fire appliances. But, as far as I can tell - the gutting of the UK fire service has been faster and more aggressive than in any other country I have looked at.

And - as I have mentioned a few times on this site - in many countries second line reserve fire and rescue capability has been increased. Even as fires decline, the ability to deal with serious incidents by mobilizing volunteers has actually been increased...

Added by Rob Johnson on 01 September 2020.

Comment removed at request of Commentor

Andy: GMFRS adopted the same no "blues and twos" policy for AFAs several years ago. Although a few AFAs did turn out to be actual fires, there was a major benefit from this policy. Their annual report pointed out that RTAs involving responding appliances fell by 30%, reducing injuries and property damage to both fire service personnel and equipment - as well as to the general public and public property.

From what I have read, accidents occur quite frequently when appliances are "on the bell", as we used to say, and more firefighters are injured in road accidents that at the fireground.

So, it seems there are tradeoffs... Interestingly, the London Metropolitan Police did a survey quite a while ago, when they dispatched police cars from one location to another at various times of day, instructing one to respond with lights and sirens and the other to do so without them at normal traffic speed. The actual travel time difference over a two mile trip was only one or two minutes - which suggests the GMFRS policy may have had similar results, as a lot of fire runs are also about the same mileage.

Reports from BSPP in Paris indicate that only 3% of AFA alarms are fires, and that only around 10% of those could not be handled by the two man crew of the utility van which was dispatched. The reasons given were that these were almost all very early stage minor incidents, and many were in sprinklered buildings.

San Francisco and Berlin statistics for AFAs are also very similar, so it does seem there is a pattern.

Added by Rob Johnson on 02 September 2020.

L4Ps are an absolute necessity in Cornwall due to the roads.

Added by Joel Whitaker on 09 September 2020.

Joel: And the Hilux makes a great one, too. We sold tons of these in the Middle East when I worked with Toyota in Kuwait. They were amazingly tough and totally reliable under all kinds of extreme off road conditions. They were especially popular with oil exploration, pipeline and engineering companies - who very rarely took them on to paved roads. A lot of them were also bought by people who ended up selling them to various military and insurgent organizations in the Middle East and Africa, where they were also very popular as high speed off road gun carriages! If you need any evidence, catch up with the "Top Gear" TV show. They tried to kill a Hiace by drowning it, burning it and blowing it up - all to no good effect, although it was badly beaten up!

Added by Rob Johnson on 10 September 2020.

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