It may have been 20 years since the Oklahoma City bombing, but those first responders who came together on April 19, 1995 are still making an impact today. A memorial badge was created in their honor to benefit the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum. The Oklahoma City National Memorial Foundation received more than $75,000 Thursday morning after a limited time badge and coin were created.
- PUB DATE: 11/6/2015 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KFOR-TV News Channel 4

VIDEO - Over 500 French firefighters set off fireworks and burned tires before storming and occupying a railway station in Lille in the latest in a series of escalating protests against the local council’s budget cuts. Staff in full uniform gathered outside the fire station of the northern city at 10:30 a.
- PUB DATE: 11/6/2015 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: rt.com

Velocity cab and chassis; Detroit DD13 500-hp engine; Waterous CSU 2,000-gpm single-stage pump; UPF Poly 300-gallon tank.

By Alan M. Petrillo

The days of a pile of equipment lying on the floor of an apparatus compartment are long gone, replaced by a wide assortment of trays, slide-outs, drop-downs, sliding and swing-out tool boards, and other setups.

Firefighters and equipment manufacturers have become creative in addressing the variety of ways equipment can be secured inside compartments so that firefighting tools are easy to locate and grab.

Brackets and Mounts

Greg Young, vice president of sales and operations for Performance Advantage Company (PAC), says his company’s philosophy is to “develop brackets that meet or exceed National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) requirements as well as offer quick and easy access and safe storage of equipment in fire apparatus compartments.” He adds that PAC makes sure that occupants are protected from sharp edges and conductivity. “For those products that go inside the cab of the truck, like brackets to hold halligans, irons, fire axes, and other tools, it’s not always about the storage; it’s about the safety,” he says. “Some tools are heavy and expensive, and we don’t want them to get loose and seriously injure someone, so our products are designed to withstand impacts like rollovers.”

Performance Advantage Co. (PAC) makes more than 50 types of brackets for fire equipment, including these brackets holding a fire ax and two closet hooks on a PAC Trac swing-out tool board. (Photo courtesy of Performance Advantage Co.)

Tom Trzepacz, PAC’s sales executive, says that his company’s most popular fitting for inside a fire truck cab is the IRONSLOCK, used for halligans and fire axes. “It’s rated for over 9 Gs of force and has a release strap to keep the tool secure,” Trzepacz says. “It’s designed for a 30-inch halligan and an eight-pound or six-pound flathead ax.” He points out that PAC makes more than 50 different types of brackets. “The HandleLock is our most versatile and widely used bracket,” he says, “with positive locking and secure mounting that can go in a cab or compartment or on the outside of apparatus. We also have a new heavy rescue tool pocket that will work on any make or model hydraulic rescue tool and can be mounted at 90 or 45 degrees, vertically, or horizontally.”

Often fire departments will use a variety of equipment-fixing methods inside a compartment, as shown here with these tools held in Performance Advantage Co. (PAC) brackets on a two-sided swing-out tool board, as well as a fixed tool board at the rear of the compartment. (Photo courtesy of Performance Advantage Co.)

Ryan Glover, marketing manager for Ziamatic Corp., says Ziamatic’s goal is to keep firefighters safe, so the majority of its equipment is tested to exceed 9 Gs of force. “We test both in-house and through third-party testing,” Glover says. “We make mounts for every ki

After spending time at Interschutz in Hannover, Germany, in June, I could not help but think about how much better the fire service would be globally if there were a crosspollination of the worldwide fire service.

This is illustrated by a quote from Matt Ridley’s book, The Rational Optimist: “It is the ever-increasing exchange of ideas that causes the ever-increasing rate of innovation in the modern world.” Interschutz is the world’s largest fire expo and occurs every five years. This year, 51 countries were represented and 157,000 people attended-an increase from 123,000 in 2010. However, it is primarily a European show with a heavy German influence.

Hannover is home to the largest exhibition center in the world. It has 5.3 million square feet of indoor exhibit space. This is more than double the size of McCormick Place in Chicago-the largest available space in North America. In addition, there are more than 624,000 square feet of open air exhibit space. The center houses 27 exhibit halls (most with restaurants), and many of the halls could accommodate three to four football fields. Interschutz used about 25 percent of the available interior space.

Apparatus

There are distinctive differences between European and American apparatus. As mentioned earlier, a crosspollination of technology and design would benefit the fire service in both Europe and America. There has been limited transfer of design. For example, roll-up compartment doors have been a mainstay of the European fire service for decades. Only in the past 20 years has the U.S. fire service embraced roll-up doors, and they are now more common that hinged doors. The Europeans have also followed American design by making many of their apparatus larger than in the past. As service delivery to more types of emergencies expands, the larger trucks are becoming more necessary.

Apparatus on display at Interschutz 2015 featured cab access that ranged from outstanding to very difficult. (Photos by author.)

Counting both inside and outside displays, there were nearly 1,000 vehicles exhibited. European design has many common characteristics for all apparatus. All pumps are rear-mounted with the pump controls at the rear of the apparatus. There are no hosebeds. All hose is rolled and stored in compartments. Structures in Europe are clustered on postage-stamp-sized lots, with underground taps for a water supply very close to each structure. This eliminates the need for “laying in” with a supply line. Surprisingly, the Europeans (with the exception of hose reels) have not adopted the idea of preconnected hoselines-a decades-old design of the U.S. fire service. I witnessed one demonstration of fire attack, and it seemed like an eternity for the crew to make their hose connections-and this is with threadless hose couplings.

Cabs

For the most part, cab access for European-style apparatus is very difficult. It is a straight vertical climb with not many stepping surfaces. The increased height of the apparatus compounds this problem. The problem was illustrated by one company actually having portable steps placed beside the officer-side door so attendees could easily get in the cab. There were several huge aircraft rescue and firefighti