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How Do You Drive a Fire Engine on Icy Roads?
This is a long video but... after watching all these cars and a bus drive totally out of control, along comes a responding Seattle Fire Department Type 1 Engine. No sliding, no out of control driving... what gives? Not having a lick of experience driving in snow and ice, I have to ask, is it the weight of the engine, chains?
How on earth can you respond to an incident when the roads are this icy?
Note: Video for this post is embedded below.
CBz
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Oldman on
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Outside of operating slower for the conditions, using neutral (N) before braking is the next smartest thing to do on icy roads. Removing power from the drive wheels, increases and evens the braking action. Putting the truck in neutral also switches off the exhaust brake.
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Permalink Reply by Gregory L Collins on
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We drive on this stuff 4-6 months a year. Secret is slow and steady, NO sudden moves. First thing is turn off the Jake Brake or Retarder, this keeps the rear wheels from sliding under deceleration. Sometimes you just can't go where you want to. If in doubt CHAIN up, drive tires first . Then if you can't steer chain up the front axle. Even chained up don't get in a hurry. As the old saying goes, Speed kills.
In Alaska life can be a challenge. We also run studded tires year around on the rigs
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Notice how the driver of the engine was going VERY slow. He possibly was chained up or had studs in the tires. Very nice job of working down an icy hill and not losing it.
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Permalink Reply by Jason Koontz on
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We've always had a "no jake" rule when the snow and ice set in, and we also had a list of "bad weather" drivers. Only those on the list were allowed to drive the apparatus in the snow and ice. It made it tougher on those of us on the list, because we had to be there more, but we understood the responsibility. On another note, Seattle Engineers are awesome at what they do. With the topography of their city, the many steep hills all around town, they take their driving very seriously. I know of one that retired after something like 50 years on the job, almost all at the same station. The Engineers know their areas, they know their hazards, and they're some of the best I've seen.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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Note: The video of the fire truck going around the corner on less than four tires was not chosen because it was from Australia... it was simply the only video I had of a fire truck responding to fast... in a country where they have roo-bars for vehicles in the outback, it's a given that aussies are obviously way ahead of us as far as vehicle safety and awareness. Now I'm on a mission to look for other video examples from other countries to show that it's a common problem we all have to deal with as Captains... and we all know the same answer... SLOW DOWN!
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Strange question from a California guy.
I guess it would come off as a bit off having someone who lives on the left coast, someone who has VERY limited ice and snow driving experience asking such a question. But... my daughter moved to Ithica, NY to go to nursing school and I'm going to be visiting her, driving in a place that I now find out has "lake conditions", which means massive snow and ice issues. Great... So instead of posting a blog that says, "Hey, I have no clue how to drive on snow and ice when I visit my daughter, can you teach me?", I chose the more... indirect approach, just like firefighting to get my questions answered, low key... But now... you call me on it? Does it sound all that strange now Brian? I think not!
CBz
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Permalink Reply by Rob Vest on
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Everyone has made excellent points and I don't have much to add. There are times when there's nothing you can do to avoid sliding though, your only hope is to be driving slow, control the slide as best as possible, and limit damages and potential injuries. Case in point, we were at a structure fire on a hilltop, heavy rescue parked, airbrakes set, wheel chocks in place, firefighters involved in suppression efforts. Our engine operator looked over to see the heavy rescue sliding backwards down a hill with no one in it. Lucky enough it slide off the driveway into the yard and stopped about 20 yards downhill. If we would have had chains attached it wouldn't have happened, but primary roads weren't icy and this was a private drive about 10 miles from our station so we hadn't chained up.
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your description of how the automated chains to get there and manually installed chains post incident afterwards makes a lot of sense. I fessed up to Brian D. that my real intention for posting this blog was to learn more about snow and ice driving, which I will be doing this season with my oldest daughter moving to Ithaca, NY, the land of lake affect... great. My other goal of this post was to offer in a round about way, training information for folks new to driving fire trucks in snow and ice conditions. hopefully, just one person reading your post for example, or one chief re-writing SOG's will benefit from yours and others words, hopefully preventing someone from getting hurt or killed or some poor Captain writing out an incident report... CBz
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Permalink Reply by Wade Seely on
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Capt. Bzy
I want to say that I have great respect for you for asking this question and trying to inform yourself on what you may expect. Not to pick on Californians, but I see a lot of them here in Colorado and 95% of them have no idea what they are doing in winter weather, and the bigger problem is that they think they know what they are doing.
So I just wanted to give you props for having the foresight to learn first.
TCSS
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Permalink Reply by Mike Gemberling on
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Now I'm wondering if the 4WD has something to do with our engine responding nicely with the Jake engaged. I'll have to do some testing. Right now our roads are crud!
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