By Carl J. Haddon

Fire department standby requests come in many shapes and sizes. However, it might surprise you to know what kind of equipment is required to do them correctly and not get caught with your bunker pants down. Most go well. But when standbys go bad, they often go really bad.

Standby requests cover high school football games, Fourth of July fireworks, 65,000-person festival concerts and rave parties, and 150,000 fans attending a NASCAR event, to name a few. These activities can be easy overtime money or a nice donation for your volunteer company or your department’s favorite charity. They can also be your worst nightmare in the blink of an eye. Are you equipped and ready?

Case Study

So, do these standby requests require specific apparatus or rescue equipment? Maybe they just need an engine or a brush truck, a basic life support bag, and a couple of firefighter EMTs. Trust me when I tell you that the answer might surprise you. Events like high school football games are commonplace and usually no-brainers, and the aforementioned equipment complement is usually sufficient-for other events, not so much.

Let’s look at something a little more challenging-and this really happened. One morning, the department received the memo that the county fairgrounds will host what event promoters would eventually bill as “Pumpkin Fest.” The event will be a combination of a carnival and a concert. It will be an all-day event on a Saturday, and onsite camping will be available on Saturday night. The memo states that expected attendance is approximately 25,000 and that concert acts will be announced at a later date.

You know the layout of the fairgrounds; the evacuation plan is in place and tested. You know the capacity of the fairgrounds is more than 50,000, so all should be golden, right? How bad can a Pumpkin Fest be?

Load-in was all according to code, and the fire marshal was satisfied. Professionals erected the huge stage and three 40-foot-tall video and spotlight towers on the grass. Event representatives asked the local fire department to provide a staffed brush engine to be on standby, just in case.

The events of that weekend would make for a good book. However, for the sake of this article, I will share just a few of the after-action report items to illustrate some of the surprises the department faced.

The Event

The fire crew reported on site as scheduled just before the gates opened at 0900 hours. They clocked out of the event at 0300 hours the next morning. The event’s attendance was 51,000 people, and the camping area was at overflow capacity. During the 18 hours, there were 447 calls for EMS with 41 ambulance transports, four air evacuations, and one gang-related fatal stabbing. Crews responded to 16 trash fires on the spectator lawn area, one vehicle fire, one high-angle rope rescue, and one confined space rescue.

The well-meaning souls at the fairground’s first-aid office were completely overwhelmed within an hour after the gates opened. Pumpkin Fest turned out to be a hard-core rock/metal event that featured a number of bands that had been previously indicted for inciting riots at other concert venues. This was not a Holly Hobby, quilt-and-craft event with a gospel concert. This event was more like a living version of Dante’s Inferno.

During an opening act, one of the video operators suffered a significant cardiac event on one of the 40-foot-tall towers, requiring rope rescue. One of the roadies became trapped between the stage loading dock and the lift gate of one of the band’s big rigs when the lift gate on the truck failed, requiring some confin

By Carl J. Haddon

Fire department standby requests come in many shapes and sizes. However, it might surprise you to know what kind of equipment is required to do them correctly and not get caught with your bunker pants down. Most go well. But when standbys go bad, they often go really bad.

Standby requests cover high school football games, Fourth of July fireworks, 65,000-person festival concerts and rave parties, and 150,000 fans attending a NASCAR event, to name a few. These activities can be easy overtime money or a nice donation for your volunteer company or your department’s favorite charity. They can also be your worst nightmare in the blink of an eye. Are you equipped and ready?

Case Study

So, do these standby requests require specific apparatus or rescue equipment? Maybe they just need an engine or a brush truck, a basic life support bag, and a couple of firefighter EMTs. Trust me when I tell you that the answer might surprise you. Events like high school football games are commonplace and usually no-brainers, and the aforementioned equipment complement is usually sufficient-for other events, not so much.

Let’s look at something a little more challenging-and this really happened. One morning, the department received the memo that the county fairgrounds will host what event promoters would eventually bill as “Pumpkin Fest.” The event will be a combination of a carnival and a concert. It will be an all-day event on a Saturday, and onsite camping will be available on Saturday night. The memo states that expected attendance is approximately 25,000 and that concert acts will be announced at a later date.

You know the layout of the fairgrounds; the evacuation plan is in place and tested. You know the capacity of the fairgrounds is more than 50,000, so all should be golden, right? How bad can a Pumpkin Fest be?

Load-in was all according to code, and the fire marshal was satisfied. Professionals erected the huge stage and three 40-foot-tall video and spotlight towers on the grass. Event representatives asked the local fire department to provide a staffed brush engine to be on standby, just in case.

The events of that weekend would make for a good book. However, for the sake of this article, I will share just a few of the after-action report items to illustrate some of the surprises the department faced.

The Event

The fire crew reported on site as scheduled just before the gates opened at 0900 hours. They clocked out of the event at 0300 hours the next morning. The event’s attendance was 51,000 people, and the camping area was at overflow capacity. During the 18 hours, there were 447 calls for EMS with 41 ambulance transports, four air evacuations, and one gang-related fatal stabbing. Crews responded to 16 trash fires on the spectator lawn area, one vehicle fire, one high-angle rope rescue, and one confined space rescue.

The well-meaning souls at the fairground’s first-aid office were completely overwhelmed within an hour after the gates opened. Pumpkin Fest turned out to be a hard-core rock/metal event that featured a number of bands that had been previously indicted for inciting riots at other concert venues. This was not a Holly Hobby, quilt-and-craft event with a gospel concert. This event was more like a living version of Dante’s Inferno.

During an opening act, one of the video operators suffered a significant cardiac event on one of the 40-foot-tall towers, requiring rope rescue. One of the roadies became trapped between the stage loading dock and the lift gate of one of the band’s big rigs when the lift gate on the truck failed, requiring some confin

By Carl J. Haddon

Fire department standby requests come in many shapes and sizes. However, it might surprise you to know what kind of equipment is required to do them correctly and not get caught with your bunker pants down. Most go well. But when standbys go bad, they often go really bad.

Standby requests cover high school football games, Fourth of July fireworks, 65,000-person festival concerts and rave parties, and 150,000 fans attending a NASCAR event, to name a few. These activities can be easy overtime money or a nice donation for your volunteer company or your department’s favorite charity. They can also be your worst nightmare in the blink of an eye. Are you equipped and ready?

Case Study

So, do these standby requests require specific apparatus or rescue equipment? Maybe they just need an engine or a brush truck, a basic life support bag, and a couple of firefighter EMTs. Trust me when I tell you that the answer might surprise you. Events like high school football games are commonplace and usually no-brainers, and the aforementioned equipment complement is usually sufficient-for other events, not so much.

Let’s look at something a little more challenging-and this really happened. One morning, the department received the memo that the county fairgrounds will host what event promoters would eventually bill as “Pumpkin Fest.” The event will be a combination of a carnival and a concert. It will be an all-day event on a Saturday, and onsite camping will be available on Saturday night. The memo states that expected attendance is approximately 25,000 and that concert acts will be announced at a later date.

You know the layout of the fairgrounds; the evacuation plan is in place and tested. You know the capacity of the fairgrounds is more than 50,000, so all should be golden, right? How bad can a Pumpkin Fest be?

Load-in was all according to code, and the fire marshal was satisfied. Professionals erected the huge stage and three 40-foot-tall video and spotlight towers on the grass. Event representatives asked the local fire department to provide a staffed brush engine to be on standby, just in case.

The events of that weekend would make for a good book. However, for the sake of this article, I will share just a few of the after-action report items to illustrate some of the surprises the department faced.

The Event

The fire crew reported on site as scheduled just before the gates opened at 0900 hours. They clocked out of the event at 0300 hours the next morning. The event’s attendance was 51,000 people, and the camping area was at overflow capacity. During the 18 hours, there were 447 calls for EMS with 41 ambulance transports, four air evacuations, and one gang-related fatal stabbing. Crews responded to 16 trash fires on the spectator lawn area, one vehicle fire, one high-angle rope rescue, and one confined space rescue.

The well-meaning souls at the fairground’s first-aid office were completely overwhelmed within an hour after the gates opened. Pumpkin Fest turned out to be a hard-core rock/metal event that featured a number of bands that had been previously indicted for inciting riots at other concert venues. This was not a Holly Hobby, quilt-and-craft event with a gospel concert. This event was more like a living version of Dante’s Inferno.

During an opening act, one of the video operators suffered a significant cardiac event on one of the 40-foot-tall towers, requiring rope rescue. One of the roadies became trapped between the stage loading dock and the lift gate of one of the band’s big rigs when the lift gate on the truck failed, requiring some confin

By Ricky Riley

In Part 1 (February 2016), I covered the untimely demise of a rescue-engine that was operated by the Kentland (MD) Volunteer Fire Department in Prince George’s County.

I went through the first steps in the rig’s replacement, starting with the insurance claim through a funding crisis caused by the need to replace an underinsured rig with a replacement unit that met current operational standards. The department went through a diligent process to secure funding, applied for grants, and was fortunate to secure the required amount needed to start building the new rescue-engine. Next, the department went through a series of submitted bids from various manufacturers. After careful review, Pierce Manufacturing, in Appleton, Wisconsin, was selected to construct the new rig. With the builder selected and a contract signed, you would think the heavy lifting would be over. But, the hard work was just beginning.

Getting Into the System

Once the contract was signed by fire department President Donald Aker, Randy Swartz, salesman from Atlantic Emergency Solutions, submitted the order to Pierce, and the order review process began. First, the administrative staff reviewed the packet and entered the truck into the construction schedule. This is when the order is issued a job number that will be referenced throughout production. The job number lives with the rig for its life and is referenced for anything from engineering designs to ordering parts after delivery. Pierce keeps an electronic file for the apparatus related to all construction, parts, and warranty work under each job number. The order review process varies in length and can take one to three weeks from when the order is received to when the job number is released to the salesperson and the customer. Once the manufacturer issues the job number, the builder sets a tentative delivery date.

With the order entered, the next step is for the order to be translated from the specifications to a comprehensive component list and engineering drawings for the contract administrator, the salesperson, and the customer. This process normally takes 60 to 90 days to complete. In this case, the process was a little shorter because of a request we put into the specifications to include a set of basic engineering prints at bid opening. With these included, the department could see the conception of the apparatus derived from our specifications.

1 The Kentland (MD) Volunteer Fire Department visited Pierce to sit down with the salesperson to start the engineering conference. Chief Tony Kelleher thought it was important to have younger members of the department make the trip so they could gain valuable experience understanding the process and building their knowledge in this area of the fire service. (Photos by author.)

The engineering prints had all the compartment sizes, vehicle dimensions, lighting placement, and a host of other options and components. This really helped to visualize the rig, and the department could quickly start the process of marking up the prints and working on any changes, corrections, or additions necessary.

The department then scheduled time to go to Pierce and sit down with the sales