By Alan M. Petrillo
There are various styles and types of rehab vehicles being put in service with fire departments around the country, both dedicated rehabs and multiuse vehicles with rehab elements or equipment.
Single-Purpose Trucks
Joe Messmer, president of Summit Fire Apparatus, says his company has built both single-purpose rehab vehicles as well as rehab elements into other trucks, such as air/light, command, and rescue trucks. “I believe using a regional approach to a rehab vehicle is the better choice,” Messmer says, “because various agencies pooling their resources into a single vehicle means they can justify spending more money on the vehicle because they will be serving so many more people.”
Summit also has built rehab units on trailers, usually standard-hitch models so they can be towed by a wider variety of trucks and that are typically about 24 feet long. “We put a toilet on them that’s accessible from the outside, often an LP-fired furnace and a couple of large roof air-conditioning units so it can handle extreme conditions, access doors on each side, room for as many as 30 firefighters, a full-size refrigerator that gets connected to a shore line, folding tripod lights, and a propane-fired generator,” Messmer notes.
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| 1 Summit Fire Apparatus has built rehab units on trailers, such as this unit that features bench seating in the back to get firefighters out of the weather, as well as plenty of storage room for rehab equipment. (Photo courtesy of Summit Fire Apparatus.) |
Shane Braun, rescue products manager for Pierce Manufacturing Inc., says departments aren’t having a lot of dedicated rehab units built, but those that do are filling specific geographic needs. “We built a dedicated rehab for the Fairfax (VA) Fire Department on a two-door commercial chassis with a 24-foot box in back holding bench seating and cabinets,” Braun says. “The vehicle has a generator that runs off the truck’s engine, and it’s designed as a place to get the firefighters off the fireground.”
Braun notes that Pierce recently built a dedicated rehab unit on a Velocity tandem-rear-axle chassis with a TAK-4 independent front suspension and Neway rear air ride suspension for the Community (TX) Fire Department. Braun says the rehab truck has a 19-inch front bumper extension with a wash sink and faucets in it and three slide-out modules in the aluminum rescue body that include a lavatory. The Community rehab truck also has a 120-volt refrigerator, a 120-volt freezer, a coffeemaker, a computer network and satellite system, digital video recorders, a Will-Burt light tower, an electric awning, 50 gallons of potable water, a 60-gallon wastewater tank, a Kohler 30-kW diesel generator, and an automatic leveling and stabilizing system.
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| 2 Awnings are features that are included on many rehab trucks, as shown here on the vehicle SVI Trucks built for the Northwest (TX) Fire Department. (Photo courtesy of the Northwest Fire Department.) |
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Posted: Apr 15, 2016
National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) Life Safety Initiative 7 states: create a national research agenda and data collection system that relates to the 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives.
In November 2015, the NFFF held its third National Fire Service Research Agenda Symposium in Arlington, Virginia. The previous symposia were held in 2005 and 2011. The symposium brought together representatives from major fire service organizations and researchers from academia.
Purpose
The symposium report from 2011 states: “The intent of the research symposia is to provide a reference source and a starting point to direct research efforts and funding toward those priorities that have been identified by the fire service. Most of the research efforts that focus on fire service issues are performed by universities, public and private sector research organizations, and independent researchers, often working in partnership with fire departments or fire service organizations.” Much of recent research funding has come from the Fire Prevention and Safety Research and Development Grants as part of the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) program under the purview of FEMA’s Grant Programs Directorate. There is no requirement that a research project be identified in the NFFF’s Research Agenda Report to get funding. However, during the grant review process, it is always helpful if the grant writers can reference a project to one or more of the topic areas identified in the NFFF report.
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| Figure 1: Firefighter Health Research. Graph furnished by Dr. Sara Jahnke, Director of the Center for Fire, Rescue and EMS Health Research at the National Development and Research Institutes Inc. |
There has been a recent surge in firefighting research projects that have greatly benefited the fire service, such as the Underwriters Laboratories and National Institute of Standards and Technology fire behavior reports. Figure 1 shows the increase in just firefighter health research alone in the past 40 years.
Focus on Fire Service Programs
It is easy to think of something like a research symposium to be focused on issues like emerging technologies. However, all of the symposia, including the most recent one, tend to focus more on what and how the fire service does things rather than product development or the latest technological advances. There is lot of emphasis on trying to understand the effectiveness of existing programs-such as fire department health and safety-as well as developing new programs. Naturally, there were several projects identified that relate to firefighter cancer prevention.
Research Focus Areas
The 2015 symposium was divided among the following seven focus areas :
- Community Risk Reduction
- Data Management
- Emergency Operations
- Health and Wellness
- Occupational Diseases of Firefighting
- Tools and Equipment
- Wildland Firefighting.
Each group consisted of seven to nine members plus a three-person facilitation team. There were also 17 observer
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Posted: Apr 15, 2016
National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) Life Safety Initiative 7 states: create a national research agenda and data collection system that relates to the 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives.
In November 2015, the NFFF held its third National Fire Service Research Agenda Symposium in Arlington, Virginia. The previous symposia were held in 2005 and 2011. The symposium brought together representatives from major fire service organizations and researchers from academia.
Purpose
The symposium report from 2011 states: “The intent of the research symposia is to provide a reference source and a starting point to direct research efforts and funding toward those priorities that have been identified by the fire service. Most of the research efforts that focus on fire service issues are performed by universities, public and private sector research organizations, and independent researchers, often working in partnership with fire departments or fire service organizations.” Much of recent research funding has come from the Fire Prevention and Safety Research and Development Grants as part of the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) program under the purview of FEMA’s Grant Programs Directorate. There is no requirement that a research project be identified in the NFFF’s Research Agenda Report to get funding. However, during the grant review process, it is always helpful if the grant writers can reference a project to one or more of the topic areas identified in the NFFF report.
|
| Figure 1: Firefighter Health Research. Graph furnished by Dr. Sara Jahnke, Director of the Center for Fire, Rescue and EMS Health Research at the National Development and Research Institutes Inc. |
There has been a recent surge in firefighting research projects that have greatly benefited the fire service, such as the Underwriters Laboratories and National Institute of Standards and Technology fire behavior reports. Figure 1 shows the increase in just firefighter health research alone in the past 40 years.
Focus on Fire Service Programs
It is easy to think of something like a research symposium to be focused on issues like emerging technologies. However, all of the symposia, including the most recent one, tend to focus more on what and how the fire service does things rather than product development or the latest technological advances. There is lot of emphasis on trying to understand the effectiveness of existing programs-such as fire department health and safety-as well as developing new programs. Naturally, there were several projects identified that relate to firefighter cancer prevention.
Research Focus Areas
The 2015 symposium was divided among the following seven focus areas :
- Community Risk Reduction
- Data Management
- Emergency Operations
- Health and Wellness
- Occupational Diseases of Firefighting
- Tools and Equipment
- Wildland Firefighting.
Each group consisted of seven to nine members plus a three-person facilitation team. There were also 17 observer
Read more
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