By Bill Adams

If the firehouse’s “pandemic ban” on Raisin Squad members lasts much longer, there may not be many of us left to agitate the young guys. Rummaging through photos from Harvey Eckart, I found one of a 1957 Mack pumper delivered to the FDNY. The portable deluge set mounted on the canopy reminded me of an incident from almost 50 years ago. Names are omitted to protect the innocent—including myself. Some of these people are still alive, and they never took kindly to hearing the story.

Stories

Wanting to emulate the FDNY, they purchased a similar deluge set to mount on their pumper. Their old, wooden station had low-door transoms, but most rigs of that era fit in with about a foot to spare. “Because it looked sharp,” they mounted the deluge on the canopy roof with its unsupported barrel pointed up about 45 degrees toward the front of the rig.

They were admiring their work when the tones dropped. Everyone scrambled and the pumper rolled out first—towing the overhead door and half the door header! The door caught on the gun’s raised barrel, long-stream straightener and stacked tips. Uh-oh! It was an expensive fix. Obviously they didn’t read the instructions about supporting the barrel to prevent stripping elevation worm gears.

The story parallels those heard over the years about apparatus not fitting inside fire stations. They’re gleefully reported by local media. Sometimes they even make it into trade journals. Without revealing the particulars, a couple incidents follow. Whenever an “Uh-oh. It don’t fit” moment happens, plausible deniability and finger-pointing begin and accountability ends.

*The young guys writing purchasing specifications for a new rig believed as gospel the station’s door height measurement, which for years was verbally passed down by older members; it wasn’t gospel. It was 6 inches shorter than thought. When the new rig came in, its top was level with the actual door height. Uh-oh! It don’t fit. Don’t blame the geezers if the young’uns didn’t bother to physically measure the door opening.

*A department’s new ladder truck just fit under the door header by 4 inches. One member pulled it out for a “rig check,” which included flying the stick. The pedestal control console had a treadplate lift-up cover hinged to swing away from the operator. Its pneumatic stay arms held it up, enabling reading the instructions and warning labels on the cover’s inside. If you sailed out the front door with the cover up it was hinged to just flop down. It was just the opposite when backing in with the cover up. Uh-oh! At least only the cover and hinge assembly had to be replaced.

*In one department whose station had multiple bays, they were relocating apparatus from one bay to another. When backing in a much “longer and taller” rig in the bay normally housing a pumper, they only “bumped into”—and didn’t completely rip down—the gas-fired heater suspended from the ceiling at the rear of the bay. Fortunately, it was just an Uh-oh! and not an embarrassingly loud fiery boom.

Are these incidents the spec writers’ or the operators’ fault? They could “just” be accidents, or honest-but-possibly-expensive oversights, or they could be analogous to the statement often heard in Forrest Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does.”

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