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By Alan M. Petrillo Alabaster (AL) Fire Department has been a customer of Sutphen for several years, so when it needed an aerial apparatus to complement the Sutphen engines it already owned, it naturally turned to Sutphen to configure an ...

By Bill Adams A fact is a verifiable truth; fiction is not. A politically correct way of dodging the truth is to call a statement a fallacy. A fallacy can be defined as a misconception, a myth, sometimes a mistake, ...

By Bill Adams In the early 1980s, a New England firefighter fell off a rig and eventually died from his injuries. His family successfully sued the fire apparatus manufacturer that built the apparatus. It was a custom pumper with an ...

By Mike Ciampo The Tallman Volunteer Fire Department is located in Rockland County, NY, a suburb of New York City. The fire district is situated in the Town of Ramapo and the firehouse is located on Route 59 in Tallman, ...

By Alan M. Petrillo Upper Township (NJ) Division of EMS has been a longtime customer of VCI Emergency Vehicle Specialists, dealers for Horton Emergency Vehicles, and has run Horton ambulances for more than 30 years. So when the need arose ...

By Alan M. Petrillo W.S. Darley & Co. has built four custom pumpers designed to ford high water conditions for Sheldon (TX) Fire & Rescue, a fire district in Harris County to the east of Houston. Roland Balderas, Sheldon’s assistant ...

By Bill Adams Crosslays and Mattydales Transverse hose storage for handlines has been around since the late 1940s. Commonly called crosslays and mattydales, they’re usually located immediately above or recessed into the top of a midship-mounted pump enclosure. Some are ...

By Alan M. Petrillo The Elkhart (IN) Fire Department covers the 32-square mile city of Elkhart with 140 paid firefighters working out of seven stations, and running six engines, one quint, one aerial platform, and three ambulances as front-line apparatus. ...

By Bill Adams Part 1 illustrated this writer’s opinion that the requirement for and installation of “warning signs” on fire apparatus could be scrutinized. This part further investigates the whys and wherefores of providing signage. There is no intent to ...

By Alan M. Petrillo East Avon (NY) Fire Department always was a believer in equipping its apparatus with foam systems, especially for industrial applications and for motor vehicle fires, but hesitated to get into compressed air foam systems (CAFS) until ...