According to Blogger Dashboard, I made five posts between 1:43 a.m. and 10:48 p.m. on June 6. So I feel justified in taking a day off today, June 7. I will, however, take note of an oddity on the agenda for the City Council's June 12 meeting. The sole item under Public Affairs & Safety is a resolution to donate a 1972 Mack fire truck to the La Vega Fire Department in the Dominican Republic. Aside from the question of why our Fire Division still has a 41-year-old piece of equipment, I did find some answers online as to why La Vega? It seems their volunteer fire department collects donations from others around the world. One story mentions a 1976 pumper truck from Germany. Another tells of a 1989 E-One Hush Pumper from Twinsville, Ohio. The firefighters wear gear with names of fire companies from all over. They are housed in an old fort built in 1813. So Plainfield will become part of this tradition of generosity to needy bomberos with the 1972 truck if the council agrees. I hope somebody with deep pockets is planning to defray the cost of transporting it to La Vega.
--Bernice
The Mack Aerialscope was purchased by the City when my father was Fire Chief. It was the most advanced equipment of its type at the time, and replaced one of the Fire Department's two aerial ladders.
ReplyDeleteThe Aerialscope consisted of a boom-mounted platform and hydraulic system by Baker that was mounted on a truck cab and chassis by Mack Trucks. Like the aerial ladder trucks of its time, the boom and platform could rotate 360 degrees. It had a reach of 75 feet, as I recall, slightly less than the aerial ladder trucks.
The new apparatus greatly expanded the fire department's ability to fight fires in low-rise and mid-rise buildings. It included a pre-piped waterway to a platform-mounted nozzle, enabling the operator on the ground to quickly pour high volumes of water into buildings and help extinguish fires without risking lives.
The Aerialscope platform was also a working surface that could bring several firefighters to a roof with their equipment, for example. This helped conserve energy and give a more stable surface from which to perform work, such as opening a roof to ventilate hot gasses and smoke, pull or tear off burning overhangs, break out windows and then advance into buildings for search and rescue.
The aerial ladder trucks, on the other hand, consisted of 100 foot long extension-type ladders, also mounted on a rotating deck. However, firefighters had to climb from bottom to top, carrying equipment that was quite heavy. Also, the aerial ladder did not have a fixed piping system for the large capacity nozzles (called deluge guns), which took time to mount onto the ladder and then more time to attach a fire hose and then extend. More importantly, a firefighter had to climb the aerial ladder and then manipulate the deluge gun, putting that firefighter in some danger.
My father was an innovator in the fire service. He was a proponent of automatic sprinkler systems, advocated and implemented productivity in the fire department, and was recognized nationally for his efforts. He knew that the Mack Aerialscope was extensively used in New York City, and adopted this new technology to help make Plainfield a safer place.
The Mack Truck Aerialscope is no longer manufactured. I believe there are other companies that still use the Aerialscope technology on chassis by different manufacturers.
Hopefully, Plainfield's Aerialscope will find a good home in La Vega. My father will be happy to know that it is getting a second chance.