By Peter Ong
The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department’s Lifeguard Unit has operated a custom rescue apparatus, Rescue 44, since February 2015.
This custom 4x4, built on a Pierce Saber cab and chassis, replaced the previous Rescue 44, which was a utility truck with a commercial-built crane.
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| 1 The San Diego (CA) Fire Department’s Rescue 44 with open compartments showing its slide-out tray and gear while rescuing a paraglider. (Photos 1-3 courtesy of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Lifeguard Unit.) |
The idea for San Diego Fire-Rescue’s new Rescue 44 came from an East Coast training trip to visit the Coast Guard around North Charleston, South Carolina. Lifeguard Sergeant Jon Vipond and Senior Lifeguard Robb Eichelberger made the trip and saw a rescue truck with a rear-mounted crane at the Charlestown County (SC) Volunteer Fire Department. They both figured such a rig with a rear-mounted crane could suit the rescue needs of San Diego Fire-Rescue’s Lifeguard Unit. “That was the spark of the idea,” says Vipond. “We passed the information to John Bahl, also a lifeguard, who did all the research for the new truck. He’s the equipment geek. John looked at the specs while the Fire-Rescue and the Lifeguard Division gathered the funding.”
Housed at the San Diego Mission Bay Lifeguard Headquarters Boating Safety Unit, Rescue 44 cost $540,000 to build and weighs 45,000 pounds. This apparatus responds to calls around the Sunset Cliffs, Torrey Pines, and Black’s Beach area, a coastline of vertical and steeply sloping sandstone cliffs dropping down to a beach, rocks, and even directly into the Pacific Ocean. A curving road usually hugs the cliffs, and flights of stairs allow access to the beaches below. Since most of San Diego’s coastal cliffs are accessible from above, San Diego Fire-Rescue lifeguards have used trucks with mechanized equipment such as cranes for cliff rescues over the decades.
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| 2 Shown are stairs leading to the beach around the Sunset Cliffs area. |
San Diego Fire-Rescue uses the new Rescue 44 as a regional resource. The heavy-duty crane comes in handy for moving heavy objects from sailing vessels to lifeguard tower “satellite station” shacks. Rescue 44 also responds to floods and can respond to collapse events. Rescue 44’s high ground clearance makes it ideal for flood rescues, carrying flood rescue gear and more lifeguards - all emergency medical technicians (EMTs) - during flood emergencies. “Rescue 44 also has potential value in confined space applications - e.g., used as a high point for vertical entries,” says Vipond, noting that the crane could be used “over a vertical confined space entry such as the access port in the top of a storage tank so that a rescuer can be lowered into the tank.”
Specifications and Performance
Rescue 44 replaced the former rig used since the 1980s that resembled a yellow electric utility service truck. “The old truck’s age was beginning to show,” says Vipond. “It wasn’t purpose-built for rescues.”
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Posted: Aug 3, 2017
The city's Fire Station 3 at Pease International Tradeport, has no fire suppression system and a "basic fire alarm system," said Fire Chief Steve Achilles. He said the City Council recently approved $610,000 to renovate that fire house to improve living spaces for firefighters and access for trucks.
Achilles said as fire officials were recently reviewing costs affiliated with the renovation, they realized they failed to include alarm and sprinkler systems, something the Fire Department requires during review of all other new construction in the city.
The cost for those systems, the fire chief said, “was not within our budget.”
Achilles said he plans to ask the Fire Commission during its Tuesday meeting to use $134,000 of its inheritance from the late Geraldine Webber to install a new fire suppression and alarm system in the Pease fire house, as well as to buy a generator and lighting for a rescue truck.
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Posted: Aug 3, 2017
It may have taken close to a decade to make it happen, but the unincorporated Alameda County community of Cherryland now has a new fire station. The 11,860-square-foot Fire Station 23 was officially unveiled Saturday at 19745 Meekland Ave., less than two blocks from the old Grove Way station that dates back to the late 1930s or early 1940s.
The two-story fire station, operated by the Alameda County Fire Department, currently houses a single fire truck equipped with water, hose and emergency medical equipment, but it has a garage that can accommodate up to two firefighting and emergency response vehicles. The station also has individual sleeping rooms for the three crew members on duty at a time; a community meeting room; an exercise room; a full-size kitchen; and offices for fire crews.
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Posted: Aug 3, 2017
A Phantom Three drone has the ability to fly at a maximum of 19,685 feet in the air and capture moments only attainable by an aerial device. The Exeter Fire Department uses the drone to get an advantageous view of reported incidents and for documentation of training sessions, Fire Chief Brian Comeau said.
Just last week the Fire Department used to drone to survey the water reservoir because of a reported oil spill. The drone helped determine the film-like layer over the water was only organic material, such as pollen, sitting on the water’s surface.
Last summer, the Fire Department used the drone to survey the severity of the drought and its impact on the Exeter River.
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