A firefighting apparatus describes any vehicle that has been customized for use during firefighting operations. These vehicles are highly customized depending on their needs and the duty they will be performing. These duties can include firefighting, vehicle extrication, dangerous goods investigations, urban search and rescue, medical emergency, swift water rescue and plane crashes.
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While fire engine red remains the most common color for firefighting apparatus, it is not required. For example, the Chicago Fire Department has a long-standing tradition of painting their apparatus black over red. Neighboring departments will also often use different colors to distinguish their apparatus. For example, the Santa Barbara Fire Department uses the traditional fire engine red while the neighboring Santa Barbara County Fire Department elects to use blue over white.
A study by the American Psychological Association publish in February 2014 indicated that lime-yellow is a significantly safer color for emergency vehicles because of its increased visibility. The study showed that lime-yellow fire apparatus were half as likely to be involved in accidents as red vehicles.
- Aerial fire apparatus
- Airport crash tender - engine used at aerodromes for aircraft emergencies
- Fire engine
- Fire truck
- Quint - a hybrid fire truck/fire engine
- Hazardous materials apparatus - vehicle used for investigations of potentially dangerous goods
- Heavy rescue vehicle
- Light and air unit
- Rehab unit - a vehicle used to re-hydrate and provide medical monitoring to firefighters and other emergency personnel. See Fire Department Rehab
- Water tender - also known as a tanker, carries large quantities of water to the fire scene.
- Wildland fire engine
- Wildland water tender
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An early device used to squirt water onto a fire is a squirt or fire syringe. Hand squirts and hand pumps are noted before Ctesibius of Alexandria invented the first fire pump around the 2nd century B.C., and an example of a force-pump possibly used for a fire-engine is mentioned by Heron of Alexandria. The fire pump was reinvented in Europe during the 16th century, reportedly used in Augsburg in 1518 and Nuremberg in 1657. A book of 1655 inventions mentions a steam engine (called a fire engine) pump used to "raise a column of water 40 feet [12 m]", but there was no mention of whether it was portable.
Colonial laws in America required each house to have a bucket of water on the front stoop during fires at night. These buckets were intended for use by the initial bucket brigade that would supply the water at fires. Philadelphia obtained a hand-pumped fire engine in 1719, years after Lynn's 1654 model appeared there, made by Joseph Jencks, but before New York's two engines arrived from London.
By 1730, Richard Newsham, in London, had made successful fire engines; the first used in New York City (in 1731) were of his make (six years before formation of the NYC volunteer fire department). The amount of manpower and skill necessary for firefighting prompted the institution of an organized fire company by Benjamin Franklin in 1737. Thomas Lote built the first fire engine made in America in 1743. These earliest engines are called hand tubs because they are manually (hand) powered and the water was supplied by bucket brigade dumped into a tub (cistern) where the pump had a permanent intake pipe. An important advancement around 1822 was the invention of an engine which could draft water from a water source doing away with the bucket brigade. Philadelphia fire engine manufacturers Sellers and Pennock model the Hydraulion is said to be the first suction engine produced in 1822. Some models had the hard, suction hose fixed to the intake and curled up over the apparatus known as a squirrel tail engine.
The earliest engines were small and were carried by four men or mounted on skids and dragged to a fire. The earliest four-wheel carriage mounted engines were pulled to the fire by hand. As the engines grew larger they became horse-drawn and later self-propelled by steam engines. John Ericsson is credited with building the first American steam-powered fire engine. John Braithwaite built the first steam fire-engine in Britain.
Until the mid-19th century, most fire engines were maneuvered by men, but the introduction of horse-drawn fire engines considerably improved the response time to incidents. The first self-propelled steam-driven fire engine was built in New York in 1841. It was the target of sabotage by firefighters and its use was discontinued, and motorized fire engines did not become commonplace until the early 20th century. By 1905, the idea of combining gas engine motor trucks into fire engines was attracting great attention; according to a Popular Mechanics article in that year, such trucks were rapidly gaining popularity in England. That same year, the Knox Automobile Company of Springfield, Massachusetts began selling what some have described as the world's first modern fire engine. A year later, the City of Springfield had an entire modern fire department supplied with Knox fire engines.
For many years firefighters sat on the sides of the fire engines, or even stood on the rear of the vehicles, exposed to the elements. This arrangement was uncomfortable and dangerous (some firefighters were thrown to their deaths when their fire engines made sharp turns on the road), and today nearly all fire engines have fully enclosed seating areas for their crews.
Audible and visual warnings
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Passive visual warnings involve the use of high contrast patterns to increase the noticeability of the vehicle. These types of warnings are often seen on older vehicles and those in developing countries. More modern designs make use of retroreflectors to reflect light from other vehicles. Vehicles will also often have these reflectors arranged in a chevron pattern along with the words fire or rescue. European countries commonly use a pattern known as battenburg markings.
Along with the passive warnings, are active visual warnings which are usually in the form of flashing coloured lights (also known as "beacons" or "lightbars"). These flash to attract the attention of other road users as the fire appliance approaches, or to provide warning to motorists approaching a stopped appliance in a dangerous position on the road. Additionally the lights are accompanied by loud sirens.
In addition to visual warnings, most appliances are also fitted with audible warnings, sometimes known as sirens, which can alert people to the presence of an emergency vehicle before they can be seen. The first audible warnings were mechanical bells, mounted on the front or roof of the truck. Most vehicles are now fitted with electronic sirens, which can produce a range of different sounds. Fire service driving training often includes the use of different sounds depending on traffic conditions and maneuver being performed. For instance, on a clear road, approaching a junction, the "wail" setting may be used, which gives a long up and down variation, with an unbroken tone, whereas, in heavy slow traffic, a "yelp" setting may be preferred, which is like a wail, but faster.
The speakers for modern sirens can be located in several places on the vehicle, including being integral to the lightbar, or hidden in the grille. Some vehicles may also be fitted with airhorn audible warnings. The "acoustic" or "air" traditional sirens are still in wide use, most notably on North American-type fire apparatus but other countries such as Japan have fitted their apparatus with these types of warning systems as well, as its overtones help the public "locate" and avoid the fire truck—the newer electronic signals disperse almost pure electronic sine wave tones, which are hard to locate, especially in city "canyons" of buildings. Furthermore, "air" sirens are generally much, much louder. In Chile, many vehicles are fitted with three types of audible warnings, which are sounded all at once: the classic "air" siren, the electronic "yelp", and the European two-tone air horns (sometimes newer vehicles are fitted with the electronic version of the latter, commonly called "Hi-Lo").
A development is the use of the RDS system of car radios, whereby the vehicle can be fitted with a short range FM transmitter, set to RDS code 31, which interrupts the radio of all cars within range, in the manner of a traffic broadcast, but in such a way that the user of the receiving radio is unable to opt out of the message (as with traffic broadcasts). This feature is built into all RDS radios for use in national emergency broadcast systems, but short range units on emergency vehicles can prove an effective means of alerting traffic to their presence, although is not able to alert pedestrians and non-RDS radio users.
- Vaccaro, Bob (1 May 2013). "What Color Should a Fire Truck Be?". Firefighter Nation. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
- "Why Lime-Yellow Fire Trucks Are Safer Than Red". American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association. February 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2015.
- Young, Charles Frederick T.. Fires, fire engines, and fire brigades: with a history of manual and steam fire engines, their construction, use, and management; remarks on fire-proof buildings ... statistics of the fire appliances in English towns; foreign fire systems; hints for the f. London: Lockwood & Co., 1866. 335. Print.]
- Rorer, Beverly, and Barbara Marinelli. Images of America: Upper Darby. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub., 2011. 112. Print.
- Editorial staff (February 1905), "Motor fire engines popular in England", Popular Mechanics 7 (2): 202.
- "Books about Knox Automobile Company - Historical Photos & Images of Knox Automobile Company". Arcadia Publishing. Retrieved 2011-10-24.
- Dallman, Chris. "What Type Of Fire Truck Lights Are Most Effective". 911 Signal USA. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
- The development of United States fire engines
- A brief, concise history of fire fighting apparatus
- Video of slowly setting up to pump a restored 1868 Button hand pumper