I own part of a Fire Engine

Posted on December 12, 2014 by Mick's Muses
TL 240 FLM

Turntable Ladder 240 FLM – © Paul Wood

Apart from working three years in the Post Office when I first left school, I spent the rest of my working life in the fire service. I joined the West Ham Fire Brigade a few day before my 18th birthda and later, became part of the London Fire Brigade in 1965 with the creation of the Greater London Council, (GLC), and enjoyed a thoroughly worthwhile career for 42 years. Despite popular misconception,   a firefighters job is far more than squirting water at flames. It is very technical job requiring vast amounts of knowledge of innumerable subjects as a Firefighter is expected to instantly deal with any hazard or to resolve any problem, irrespective of what it may be.

It is also a career filled with training courses on many subjects.One such intensive course I did was operating a Turntable Ladder often know as Aerial Ladders in the USA. These ladders extend to 100 feet in length and are used for both rescue and water tower purposes. One cannot just park these appliances anywhere and extend the ladders as they certainly are not elastic. Gaining the knowledge where to quickly site these vehicles in a emergency is all important. Knowledge of the effects of gravity is important too for the lower the angle of the ladder, the greater the strain on the entire vehicle. It’s rather like holding a broom erect above your head with your arm fully extended. That in itself is not too much of an effort but if you were then to lower the broom in a arc horizontally still with your arm fully extended, it will take a great deal of strength to achieve this.

Now I am retired and my career is rapidly disappearing into the past with each passing day. Fortunately social media has provided an outlet for retired firefighters like myself to remain in contact with colleagues and there is a large group on Facebook for retired London Firefighters.

In the past few months, members of this group became aware of an ex-London Fire Brigade Turntable Ladder becoming available for sale. When it was originally disposed of in 1981, it was bought by a tree surgery company to enable them to complete their work. After that it fell into disuse and many members of my group made individual donations which enable the successful purchase of this machine.

Given its age, it was surprising still in relatively good working condition and my group has now formed a preservation society for this machine. The objective is to fully restore this Turntable Ladder to its former glory and then exhibit it is various displays throughout the country. It is also hope that eventually it will also be available for hire at wedding and possibly even funerals. Given this type of vehicles flat rear, they have sadly, (including our machine), been used at hearses in the past for Firefighters who have tragically died in the line of duty.

A website has also been set up for the preservation society and this can be viewed at Tl-240 FJM Preservation Group

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Night of the Frogs

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Mick's Muses

Premier Pet Products Squeeze Meeze Dog Toy - Frog, LatexAs a firefighter it is not unusual to attend an incident on a neighbouring fire stations ground or even further afield. Frequently if a neighbouring station is already attending an incident when a further incident occurs, it is normally the neighbouring stations that will attend. This does mean firefighters not only have to learn an intimate knowledge of their own fire stations ground but also the topographical layout of other stations too. Other reasons why a firefighter will go off his own patch, (area), is if the number of fire appliances, (engines), needed to cover the potential risk presented by a particular incident is more than are based at the local station, then neighbouring stations will also attend. When I was a Turntable Ladder operator based at Plaistow Fire Station, it was not unusual to get called several times a day to the Ford motor plant at Dagenham as Plaistow was where the nearest such appliance was based at the time. The final main reason for going to an incident is that the situation faced by the local station is too great for them to handle on their own. In these cases the officer-in-charge will call for assistance via radio with what is known as a make-up call.  Make-up means make pumps four, six, ten or however many the officer-in-charge considers will be necessary to deal with the situation in both the number of pumping or specialist appliances and manpower. If an incident is large enough, the additional appliances will come from all over Greater London.

I went to one such incident in Barking in the 1970’s. This was to the warehouse of a large goods importer which faced onto the main A13 road.  The warehouse was built mainly of sheet metal covering a steel joist construction which allowed for a large interior storage area. In this particular case, a fire had broken out inside the storage area which in turn spread rapidly though the exposed boxes of stored goods. As large as the fire was, there was nothing particularly unusual about this fire and during the course of my career, I went to quite a few incidents like this.

I say there was nothing unusual except for one unique feature which presented a bizarre hazard. Stored inside the warehouse were hundreds of cardboard boxes containing a toy probably imported for Hong Kong. The toy was a hollow plastic frog with a spring fitted to a sucker pad inside which was in turn fixed to the base of the frog. The idea behind the toy was quite simple, children would push down on the frog causing the spring to compress and the sucker pad would adhere to the inside to prevent the spring releasing. The sucker would then slowly lose its adhesion causing the spring to suddenly release which in turn would make the frog leap into the air. The cardboard boxes were quite large with each one probably containing several thousand toy frogs stored loose inside. Due to a mixture of both fire and water damage, the cardboard boxes had become sodden spilling the contents and leaving hundreds of thousands of toy frogs strewn all over the floor.

As the fire came under control, teams of firefighters entered the building to carry out more localised firefighting within the warehouse. Like many buildings involved in a fire, the electricity supply had been cut off and it was dark inside, it was also during the night. As firefighters trampled around the building they could not help but tread on masses of the toy frogs. The weight of the firefighters caused the springs inside the frogs to compress and be held in a compressed state by the sucker pad. It was not long before a firefighter felt something hit him in the face in the dark. Soon there was a chain reaction of pinging noises followed by expletive cries from firefighters as thousands of the toy frogs started jumping everywhere in the dark.

In the end, everyone was glad when they could leave this artificial zoological mayhem behind. I wonder how many accident books contained the entry, “Injured by a flying frog.”

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