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New Quints at Hilton Head Island
The two new quints from Spartan are arriving; one was featured at the recent South Carolina Firefighters Association annual convention in Myrtle Beach. Here are some early pictures of the apparatus (which are identical) with more to come. Furthermore, if you are interested, there's more discussion on aerial apparatus as well as truck company operations over at http://www.firefighternation.com/group/canceltheengine. If you aren't a member yet, you need to get on board. All the best truckies are hanging out there. See you soon.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on
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A quint...the incestuous offspring of an engine and a truck. It's just unnatural. How do you staff them? With engine guys that are being punished for reading without moving their lips? Or truckies that can do more than one thing while chewing gum?
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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I haven't checked in three hours or so, but when I last saw one of our quints, it was staffed with...firefighters.
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Actually, we letter our rigs with the apparatus type, but have interchangable number panels so that an engine's shop (chassis) ID number has nothing to do with its company ID.
We have eight of these engines. At any one time, six are front-line and two are in reserve. When a company swaps into a reserve, they just change the company identifiers (door panels, helmet fronts, Passport IDs, and SCBA identifiers) and get back in service. The number panels just slide out of the holders on the doors and bumpers, so switching them is simple and takes a few seconds.
Engine 2 at a relay pumping class...
Engine 3 at a company drill...
If you look carefully at the quint photo Mick posted, you will see the "Engine" lettering on the jumpseat door, with the company identifier bracket empty on the door.
This has another advantage - when one of the quints is out of service, they can switch their numbers to one of the reserve engines and get back in service, as the system is the same for both apparatus types.
The reason that we run the quints as engines is that our current quints are actually engines with an aerial ladder and a few extra ground ladders, but very little additional truck company capacity. The new quints will have the capability to function as truck companies at fires where they are not first due if needed.
That said, Hilton Head truck companies require two drivers and bend in the middle. The quints are nice, but they don't meet that criteria. :-)
And...the spec committee doesn't get to assign company identifiers to the apparatus - the Fire Chief does that.
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Thank you. We invite anyone who visits to stop in at any of our seven stations or at Communications, Headquarters, and/or the Training Center.
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BenChief,
Where exactly did I lose you that I was making a joke? I guess the barrel of monkeys is hammered shut pretty tightly down there.
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One correction - the floodlighting package I cited was for the engines, not for the quints.
The quints have the twin brow/ladder tip lights, a pair of quick-raise lights on each side, and a single fixed flood on the rear end beneath the turntable.
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This rig was delivered today. It is even more impressive up close.
One thing that doesn't show in the photo is that both sides of the ladder have red hash marks to show how far the ladder is extended. The bottom of the 4th fly section has red hashes on both beams. When the hashmark on the fly lines up with the hash mark on the bed section, the ladder is extended to the length indicated on the bed section.
Lots of nice details on these rigs.
Our Support Services Deputy Chief and Apparatus Committee did an outstanding job!!!
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Kali,
One detail that I thought was interesting is that the Crimson logo is cut into the diamond plate on the turntable. Without the logo, the holes would be perfect cup holders.
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Jack,
I was also joking. The barrel of monkeys, BTW was part of one of our station-alerting receivers for a while. This station's alerting was not working correctly for a while, so the troops had a barrel of monkeys, a Magic 8-Ball, a pair of giant dice, and a few other items to help them determine if their station alert had activated, where they were assigned, and th call location.
The barrel eventually went away, but the monkeys remained.
I spent a lot of time on truck and rescue companies earlier in my career. I understand how it feels to be promoted from hose-dragger to truckie.
I've also been a quint officer at a previous department. The firefighters on our quint clearly understood that they were truckies that could do their job and the engine's job, too. :-)
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Humor, like so many other things, is in the eye of the bejokester...I guess.
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Permalink Reply by Russ on
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Kali: No disrespect intended but "HHI" hardly seems like a community where money is a problem. this truck looks functional and cost effective and as we all know, quints are the thing of the future. GREAT JOB HHI!
In my area a dept paied half a mil for truck like this one. its a tower ladder equipped like this one. the dept needed it but the public bitched because it was origionally a demo truck and had a AM-FM-CD player because it traveled alot. i happened to be standing around when a citizen was bitching about the stereo and i asked, you're bitching about the stereo and not the cost? when i told him how much it cost he wanted to know why the department cant build their own trucks? i said they are waiting for the cops to "start" building their own police cars, guns and body armor. Fire appratus must meet standards and the department is obligated to buy them (at the lowest bid) the best they can for the safety of the personnel and the community-(wow i shouldda been a commissioner) They're gonna get 20 years or more out of this truck and i wish them the best o luck with it. its beautiful
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Russ,
Money is indeed a problem for HHI. We have had multiple years of serious budget cuts, for starters.
Last year, we returned a SAFER grant for almost $1 million due to not having the budget to pay the required matching funds. (Milwaukee did the same thing at almost the same time, and we didn't hear anything about how Milwaukee didn't seem to be a place where money is a problem.
The reason that we ordered these two quints in the first place is that we had intended to have an entire fleet of non-quint engines and two truck companies. With the non-funding of the second truck, we altered our engine delivery from 10 to 8 and bid the two quints as replacements.
Most of the equipment for these two rigs will be transferred over from our existing quints, which have much less capability than these pieces.
Just like everyone else, we have to live within our budget. We are fortunate that we have a council that adopts our master plan, which includes a vehicle replacement plan.
Our council looks at our capabilities as essential to maintaining public safety and the chacter of our community. They also understand that you can't get a dollar's worth of apparatus life for a nickel's worth of apparatus.
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