• SMEAL has announced that the Charlotte (NC) Fire Department's Ladder 23 achieved the milestone of responding to 40,423 calls in 10 years. The Smeal-built 105-foot rear-mount aerial ladder drove 177,000 miles-enough to travel around the world seven times. During that time, Ladder 23 has been through 1,890 gallons of oil, 158 tires, and 76,542 gallons of diesel fuel but only had 34 aerial-related work orders during the ten-year span.

Captain Buddy Caldwell, of the Charlotte Fire Department, sums up the value of a reliable vehicle this way: "A truck is the firefighters' life for 24 hours when on shift. They trust that truck to be dependable, to get them to every call, and to function the way it's supposed to function when they get there. It's an integral part of their job. And it's all got to work."

The truck is now in reserve status and was replaced by a new 2012 Smeal 105-foot rear-mount aerial.

• GLOBE, DUPONT, and the NATIONAL VOLUNTEER FIRE COUNCIL (NVFC) have teamed up again to provide new gear to volunteer fire departments in need. The application period is now open for eligible departments to apply for up to four sets of gear. Up to 52 sets will be given away in 2013.

To celebrate the company's 125th anniversary and say thank you to firefighters who dedicate themselves to protecting their communities, Globe partnered with DuPont and the NVFC in 2012 to launch a gear donation program. In all, 16 departments in the United States and Canada were awarded a total of 144 sets of gear.

To be eligible to apply for a gear donation, departments must be all-volunteer, serve a population of 25,000 or less, be located in the United States or Canada and legally organized under state law, and be a department or individual member of the NVFC. Find full program criteria and apply at www.nvfc.org/globe-gear-donation. Applications are due by June 30, 2013.

• MIAMI-DADE (FL) FIRE RESCUE'S Training Division recently took delivery of a Doron 660 Driver Simulator. This technology will allow firefighters to enhance their driving skills as well as increase their confidence when operating a fire engine.

The Doron 660 can simulate 102 different computer-generated scenarios and will allow the instructor to modify and customize each one via a computer console. The simulator is encased in a life-size fire apparatus shell, which is fully equipped with lights and sirens. Firefighters can respond to situations ranging from driving in the rain at night to a barn fire to responding to a plane crash on a busy highway in the snow. The simulator can also test braking reaction times and evasion maneuvers. The new simulator will allow drivers to operate a fire apparatus in a controlled, safe environment without the fuel consumption and wear and tear that come with training on the road.

• E-ONE announces that members of the Guil-Rand (NC) Fire Department and board of directors recently signed a contract for three new custom eMAX pumpers on Typhoon® chassis. "For years our department has survived by purchasing good, quality used apparatus, and we searched for two years before deciding to purchase new apparatus," says Brian Cox, Guil-Rand's chief. "These will be our first new trucks since 1996." Each new eMAX will feature a 780-gallon water tank, 1,500-gpm pump, 6-kW generator, Cummins® ISL 450-hp engine, enclosed ladder tunnel storage, dual canopy medical ca

W. Parker Browne

It's a given that suburban and rural fire departments that routinely draft from folding tanks or other static sources must have well-trained pump operators. I have learned during fire pump operations and drafting water from a static source instruction that priming the centrifugal fire pump is generally one of the most challenging and hardest tasks for the student to understand and master. Automatic priming offers ease of operation when priming a centrifugal pump.

Automatic priming was a standard feature and natural benefit for fire pumps installed in most of the early fire trucks built in the United States. These fire pumps were typically positive displacement, either piston or rotary type. Positive displacement fire pumps were truly self-priming because they were able to pump both air and water. The operator just connected a suction line from the pump to the water source, engaged the pump, opened a discharge, and waited for the air to pass through the pump and then for the water to flow. It was that simple.

If the pump swallowed some air during operation because of turbulence at the entrance to the hose, or even a slow leak in the hose itself, the fire pump would move air through and continue to provide water pressure as long as the pump was running and the water supply lasted. With the advent of the centrifugal pump, manufacturers had to find another way to prime because the centrifugal pump cannot move both water and air. When the centrifugal pump came into common use, so did the primer.

(1) The simplicity of the air-powered primer design is in its ability to create a high vacuum without the use of moving parts or high electrical current draw. Passing the pressurized air through a series of nozzles creates the vacuum. The reliability of a product that has no moving parts and is powered by a vehicle system as carefully engineered and maintained as the air brakes has led to the air-powered primer's growing use on new vehicles as well as its retrofit popularity on older vehicles equipped with air brakes. (Photos and illustrations courtesy of Trident Emergency Products, LLC.)

Conventional Priming

A conventional primer is a small vacuum-producing pump that can remove the air from the suction hose and pump. Since the primer's inception, the pump operator has been required to activate it manually, which can lead to problems if the operator is not trained in its use. If it is shut off too soon, the prime can be lost-if left running too long, the primer can burn out its vanes and seals.

Across the ocean, European fire truck builders also use the centrifugal-style pump. However for the past several decades, they have been providing many of their pumps with an automatic priming feature. Their approach also uses a separate small positive displacement priming pump, but the primer is automatically engaged whenever the pump shaft is rotating and it senses little or no discharge pressure.

Although this approach is not quite as simple as using a truly self-priming water pump, it does automatically tie the separate primer's operation to the water pump's discharge pressure status. The Godiva, Rosenbauer, and Ziegler brands all have fire pumps available with automatic priming.

As the world grows smaller, many of the more useful ideas for firefighting techniques and equipment are crossing the oceans in all directions. The automatic priming idea for centrifugal fire pumps is one of these and makes perfect sense on any fire truck for several reasons:

• It is simple and makes the pump operator's job easier, allowing time for other tasks.
• It will automatically remove any

With regret, the Washington Fire Chiefs, and the Kent Fire Department Regional Fire Authority
 wishes to notify the public of the death of Engineer Robert W. “Bob” Schmidt.

Paul and Jeff came to our region March 30, as part of the series of presentations around the state hosted by the Washington Fire Chiefs. Our session fell on a warm, sunny Saturday at the start of Spring Break in our area. We only mustered a dozen attendees.  Many of us were not clear exactly what we were going to be presented, which didn’t help attendance either. Those of us who made it there experienced an excellent introduction into High Reliability Organizations and Just Culture concepts, with an emphasis on event investigation through deconstruction and the application of algorithms that promote consistent, transparent decisions about coaching and discipline by administrators. Decisions that recognize human fallibility, promote the understanding and recognition of at-risk behavior, and the appropriate use of discipline for reckless behavior, in an open learning environment...

The Washington Fire Chiefs EVIP Program is changing.  As most of you know, the EVIP program is due for re-accreditation in 2013.  Rather than update the existing program, the EVIP committee elected to go in a different direction. 

We have attempted to update the materials to make both the instructors' and students' jobs easier.  This new program has a section which spells out the annual continuing education requirements, such as:  Accident Case Reviews, Rodeo, Road Course, etc.  It also has an Instructor re-certification requirement whereby instructors must attend a Train-the-Trainer course once every five years...