WVFD.com

- by Mark Campbell "What makes a fire truck...a fire truck?" Usually it starts because someone has the need for a fire truck and that vehicle sitting in the garage seems to fill the need. Just paint it red, put some flashing lights and a siren on it, and it's a fire truck. Well, almost. Just about anything can be Truck 6, 1976. called a fire truck and serve a purpose useful to the fighting of fires. If you ever get the chance to look at a lot of fire trucks, you'll see what we mean. They don't even need to be red. Weston didn't purchased a red fire truck for years. We use a yellow over white color scheme. "Why?" I hear you ask. Back in the early '70s there was a lot of noise about red being a difficult color to see at night and fire trucks should really be a lighter color for safety (never mind that they are almost always lit up like Christmas trees). The Powers That Be recommended lime green or yellow and       Is it a fashion statement?       white as the only safe colors. At the time it looked as if the law would require those colors. The Weston Volunteer Fire Department, being always on the cutting edge, decided to beat the rush with its next engine and go with the flow. Even after it became apparent there was not going to be a ban on red, we kept with the yellow and white. The only red engine we had until 2001 was the Old Mack. Now we're back to red, starting with Engine 7. In addition to the lime, yellow, white and red, there are red, blue, black, and a city in Colorado uses a really neat Emerald Green for their fire trucks. So we know it's not the color that makes a fire truck. Just what is it? There only a couple of types of fire trucks which actually have to meet certain minimum requirements set down by the National Fire Protection Association. Class A Pumpers and Ladder Trucks are the two with which most people are familiar. Weston has three Class A Pumpers in service which meet the criteria covering such things as the permissible age of the apparatus, minimum amount of water which must be carried on a pumper (500 gallons, if you were wondering), how much and what diameters of hose, and so forth. It is similar for Ladder Trucks, but we don't have a Ladder and must borrow from out neighbors if we need one. Every Fire Station is required to have at least one Class A Pumper. All other fire trucks are at the department's discretion. Aren't all fire trucks the same? No way. There may be similarities, and there are some manufacturers which produce cookie cutter fire apparatus, but most fire trucks are custom built. The fire service is constantly seeking ways to improve its fire suppression capabilities with better and innovative techniques and equipment. Fire departments steal ideas from each other constantly. If you're really lucky, you may get credit for an idea. The hose crosslays that you see just behind the cabs on all Weston's Engines are called Mattydales Mattydales after the Mattydale N.Y. fire department which invented them. These hose lines enable a fast attack with fewer firefighters. Our needs in a fire truck are different from other departments because of the type of exposures we cover. If you compared the way we set up our Engines to the way a big city such as New York or Boston does, you'd see a big difference, mostly because we don't have the high rise exposures that they do (and they have fire hydrants on every corner). What's in a name - Engine vs. Truck. Not all trucks are engines and not all engines are trucks. Generally, the name "Engine" is reserved for an apparatus that carries and pumps water, and "Truck" is used for those that don't. This doesn't always hold true; for every rule there is an       When is a truck not a truck?       exception. Take the neighboring Town of Wilton's Ladder Truck for instance. Not only is it a 100 foot ladder with a platform on top, it has a pump as well. Most big city departments won't put a pump on their Ladder Trucks, but in smaller departments you may need one piece of apparatus to cover several different needs, hence Wilton's hybrid Ladder/Pumper (they call it a Ladder Truck by the way). Weston has two "Trucks" and neither carries a ladder. Well, one of them does, but it's only a step ladder. So we know that Engines and Trucks are different. Are the firefighters who Ventilating a structure. ride them different as well? Not really. But they usually do have different jobs at fires. Engine Companies are most often responsible for putting the wet stuff on the red stuff (known as fire suppression), while Ladder Companies do search and rescue, and open windows and roofs to let the smoke and heat out of the building (known as ventilation). Again, these tasks may vary from department to department. In Weston, where we don't have a Ladder Company per se, Truck Company operations are performed by the Engine Companies. Since we are volunteer and depend on members responding from wherever they are to man the Engines, who does what at a fire may well be a function of the order in which they arrive at the fire house or at the scene. As a result, we all need to be familiar with all aspects of fire fighting. The Engine Company of today or even this minute may be the Ladder Company tomorrow. The WVFD also performs rescue operations both on land and in the water. In fact there are more rescue calls per year       Anything but cats.       than actual fire calls by a wide margin. Motor vehicle accidents make up the majority of our rescue activities and the Jaws-of-Life get a regular work out, but we have performed cliff rescues, water rescues, animal rescues and freed the occasional toddler from the locked bathroom. We do not pull cats from trees, however. The WVFD has a dive team for deep water work. The boat we use is an inflatable Zodiac referred to as "Marine 1." The name is a little grandiose, perhaps, but better than Rubber Ducky 1. Mark Campbell also authored most of the apparatus descriptions on this site.