Fire Critic An Unadulterated View of the Fire Service
There is more to the story that I wrote about last night (link).
In this last budget cycle, the FD asked for $14 million to purchase rigs for the fleet…they got $300k. You and I both know that $300k doesn’t go very far in purchasing apparatus.
You can watch a news story on it from last night below:
http://www.ktvu.com/index.html
check the right hand column and scroll down to the engine pulling out.
Unfortunately, I don’t know everything about San Fran, however they had a perfect storm of incidents recently.
…more than 1/2 our dept was deployed when we had 2 greater alarm fires at the same time a few weeks back. HALF.
4 alarm brought 12 engines
3 alarm brought 9 engines, plus RIC teams, 23 of 41 companies deployed at once.From an anonymous email.
The Fire Critic remembers the fires and covered them when they happened. Read about them here: Two Big Fires in San Francisco.
I understand that there are other issues with purchasing apparatus. Apparently part of the problem lies with some finicky customization:
Problem is we require specific specs for our engines which only a few manufacturers handle. Two of which are out of business, so when it goes to bid there are no bids coming in.
For example, all our threads are 3″, not 2 1/2″, we require 1250gpm dual stage 500 gpm, scba mounted outside, not in seats and some other rinky stuff.
If I were an apparatus manufacturer, I would have one ear on the phone with development on ensuring we could make a truck with San Fran specs and another ear on the phone with San Fran’s Chief!
