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Chris Mc Loone |
When I joined the fire service in 1993, fire company veterans at the time were not that far removed from riding the back step.
The closest I ever got to riding the back step was standing up in the jump seat area of our '81 American LaFrances, which was still permissible at the time. I started thinking of this recently after a conversation I had with my former chief.
It was meeting night, and a fire company member had recently completed a project he took on to gather existing manufacturer nameplates we had and research and purchase nameplates of all the apparatus we've had through years. The collage he came up with, all mounted on a piece of diamond plate, or tread plate for the spec writers and readers out there, was pretty impressive. This former chief is the one I joined under, and he was chief for most of my 20 years in the fire company. As we admired the work, he would point at a nameplate and say, "I rode that one, and that one, and that one, but not that one … I wasn't around for that one." The names on the collage include Garford, Palmer-Singer, Saulsbury, American LaFrance, and Ward LaFrance. Besides the '81 American LaFrances I'm sure most are tired of hearing me mention by now, and which I won't stop doing, we ran a 1923 American LaFrance. We paid cash for it, and it was the first brand new apparatus we owned.
We used that truck until 1951. This is remarkable to me and is really a testament to the workmanship of fire apparatus even then. My former chief rode the truck at least once in his childhood, "somewhere between 1947 and 1951," he said.
The conversation turned to changes in apparatus in recent years, and I remarked that for our newest members, those who joined in the past 10 to 15 years, there aren't many differences between the trucks we're building now and the ones they came into the fire service with. They have only known fully enclosed cabs with SCBA in the jump seats and seat belts for all. Speaking of SCBA, they've only known fully integrated PASS alarms, not the ones we needed to remember to turn on ourselves. They've known regulators that attach directly to their face pieces vs. a hose coming off the face piece connecting to a regulator at our chest. They came in with and have only seen five-inch LDH dropped from a hydrant. They've only known 1¾-inch attack lines, and the booster reel is something that rarely gets used.
Do they necessarily need to know every aspect of the SCBA I used 20 years ago? Of course not. I'm more concerned with them using what we have now properly. However, knowing what came before them is still important. It's only when we understand where came from that we can better understand how we arrived where we are and plot a course for the future.
I found myself wondering how our newest members will look back at their first 20 years. What will their stories be? Hopefully, they'll be talking about the old days when you actually had to hold a thermal imaging camera in your hand, when ICs kept track of a company's location with magnets instead of on a laptop or tablet screen in real time, and when SCBA weighed more.
The key is to keep talking. The kitchen table at the firehouse is a great place to discuss tactics, lessons learned, and recent events in the fire service. It's also a great time for newer members to listen to seasoned members. There is also a lot to learn from war stories and about how things used to be done. It not only provides newer firefighters with an appreciation for what they have now, it also preserves the history of the fire department. Word of mouth has preserved our history for hundreds of years.
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