There’s a reason why there are laws against blocking a hydrant with your car–and now there’s also video evidence as to why.

THEMAJESTIRIUM1 shot this video of the FDNY responding to a fire in the Bronx. The responding engine had to clear the hydrant, which was blocked by a vehicle. The driver was nowhere to be found, so the department took matters into its own hands.

Lesson learned?

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Corydon Fire & Rescue Saturday dedicated its new Tanker 565 with a big ceremony.

The apparatus—which replaces a fire truck that was used for 45 years, according to a report in wevv.com—was purchased via fundraisers and a FEMA grant.

A Spokane County (WA) fire truck lost control on an icy road and rolled onto its side on Highway 395 while responding to a call early Friday morning.

Just after 5 a.m., Spokane County Fire District 4’s Engine 49 began to slow down while traveling north on the highway to a report of a car accident. The apparatus then lost traction, crossed the highway, and rolled onto the driver’s side.

Two firefighters were taken to a hospital with minor injuries, and both were wearing their seatbelts at the time of the crash, which happened just south of W. Wild Rose Road in Deer Park.

No other cars were involved in the crash.

“This morning, April 15, 2022, at approximately 05:08 Spokane County Fire District 4’s Engine 49 was involved in a rollover accident while responding to a report of a motor vehicle collision on Highway 395,” the department writes on Facebook. “Engine 49 began to slow their apparatus while driving northbound on 395 when they lost traction resulting in crossing the highway and rolling on to the driver’s side of the apparatus.

“The accident occurred just south of Wild Rose Rd. There were no other vehicles impacted by the collision. Most importantly, the two firefighters on the apparatus only sustained minor injuries and were transported to the hospital for precautionary evaluation. They are expected to be released. Both firefighters were wearing their seatbelts at the time of the accident. We are thankful for the assistance from the Washington State Patrol who assisted us this morning as we work through this incident. We are beyond grateful that no one was seriously injured.”

Liberty Township plans to break ground in early May on a new Liberty Road fire station, reports dispatch.com.

The facility will be built adjacent to the current station—on the Liberty Park ball fields. Once the project is complete, the old building will be demolished and the fields relocated there, the report notes.

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Officials say the current facility—located at 7761 Liberty Rd. and built in 1990—was not intended for full-time staff.

Carl J. Haddon

Regardless of the size, location, or makeup of a given fire department, we all have our mechanisms in place to spec things like new apparatus and equipment. Throughout that process, we traditionally look for things like compatibility, warranty, delivery, and fit and finish, among other things.

We may notice that an FDNY spec for a new apparatus looks like the best of the best, but we are also forced to realize that the length of the apparatus or the tank and pump capacities are not compatible with our firehouses or our response areas. We utilize this process to spec and vet everything from trucks to self-contained breathing apparatus, to turn out gear, but do we use these same processes when considering bringing in outside training programs to teach our firefighters?

Recently, there seems to have been a rash of life-threatening and life-ending mishaps during various external training programs across the country, and I will simply let that fact stand alone.

From safety, to cost, to relevance, why wouldn’t we want to seriously vet any training program of instructors that we look to bring in, or travel to attend classes with? I’ve been a fire service instructor for more than 20 years; I would and do hope that anyone who considers bringing me in for training would do their homework to make sure that I’m the right guy for the job.

I also understand that the word “job” can have several meanings. If the real “job” is public relations or “wiz bang star power,” then by all means bring in the largest amount of horsepower that your department can afford. On the other hand, if you want specialty training that needs to be taught with your specific applications in mind, wouldn’t you want to look around for the best program for your needs?

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Without getting too deep in the weeds with this, allow me to offer a quick example that I encountered while teaching overseas recently. The assignment was to teach Incident Command System levels 300 and 400 classes. In my opinion, both teaching and taking these classes make watching paint dry look exciting. These classes were made mandatory for the island’s upper management of various government agencies. Many of those in attendance had taken these classes previously (not from me) but retained very little.

When I asked them why they thought so little of the prior trainings and instructor, they all said that it was difficult to absorb because the class was taught directly from the book, with l