6 ms·

The Difference Between Municipal Fire Trucks and Airport Fire Trucks

100 points by taubek 2y ago

brudgers 2y ago
In the US, Airport fire operations have their own NFPA Standard https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-440-standard-development/440 https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-440-standard-d... And their own standard for fire fighter qualification https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-1003-standard-development/1003 https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-1003-standard-...
potato3732842 2y ago
The airport truck is gonna be operated in a different regulatory setting under different incentives than the municipal truck. That counts for something.
nayuki 2y ago
Somewhat related, Not Just Bikes / Jason Slaughter talked about how large fire trucks create the need for wide roads, which enables normal car drivers to go at dangerously high speeds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ (27m24s) [2024-08-11]
- jonpurdy 2y ago
  It's absolutely nuts to me that US cities (like in Sunset in SF with 50 foot wide roads) accommodate giant fire trucks in addition to both sides having street parking (and driveways and garages!) instead of having narrower roads with smaller trucks (like in Netherlands and Japan, which were discussed in that video). NJB also has a video※ about Japan's tiny streets (relative to USA) that elaborates on how a single factory (street width) can improve so much about a place. ※ - https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    That’s mostly myth. San Francisco’s plan was built wide to accommodate streetcars and to reduce the spread of fire. The city was razed by fire after the 1906 earthquake, with several reasons (including a lunatic army contingent that built “firebreaks” by blowing up buildings and the fire chief getting killed in a freak accident early on) contributing. There’s a great book called “San Francisco is burning” worth reading. My dad was a fire chief for decades in a city department. They only cared about street width in central business districts or other areas where certain types of aerial ladders were required for rescue companies. If they can’t get a ladder up, they need more firemen to respond to certain calls. Cities are insured and firemen DNGAF if they smash up cars on narrow streets, I suspect they find it fun.
    - wongarsu 2y ago
      On the other hand San Francisco has these giant articulated aerial ladder trucks. European trucks reach the same ladder heights on much smaller trucks by having more telescoping segments on the ladder. I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of it is a feedback loop: wide streets mean fire trucks can be big, big fire trucks mean streets have to be big (even if only the streets the fire department cares about)
    - dboreham 2y ago
      Edinburgh's new town (designed 1776) has some very wide streets. When cars were invented they became handy because two cars could be parked nose to nose across the middle of the street plus the usual curb parking on both sides, still leaving room for four lanes of traffic. Traffic calming and pavement|sidewalk widening measures in recent years have reduced this to one vehicle across the middle, curb parking and one lane each way.
  - reneherse 2y ago
    Check out the Village Homes subdivision in Davis, CA. It was designed with narrow streets and off street parking so that trees could more effectively shade the pavement. Also, the paved streets alternate with bike and walking paths between rows of houses. One result of the shaded streets and increased greenery is ambient summer temperature that is noticably cooler compared to other nearby neighborhoods. The original planners worked with the local FD to make sure their trucks could turn around in the cul de sacs. https://maps.apple.com/?address=Village%20Homes,%20Davis,%20CA,%20United%20States&auid=10746652270401562085&ll=38.550601,-121.780216&lsp=7618&q=Village%20Homes&t=h https://maps.apple.com/?address=Village%20Homes,%20Davis,%20...
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Just to point, and as the video say, it's not the trucks that create the need. Just because your city have some large trucks to send where hydrants are rare, it doesn't mean you need to design the entire city so they can fit.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  They open with the sharp increase in pedestrian deaths and zero in on fire trucks. Weird. Firetrucks haven’t changed since 2010. Pickup truck expansion, embracing poor driver controls and visibility, and the abandonment of traffic enforcement has. I think a shuffle of fire department equipment may be warranted as EMS has overtaken fire calls, but accommodation of these things is one of a list of many factors.
  - HideousKojima 2y ago
    The percentage of the population smoking weed has also roughly doubled in that time, as another likely contributing factor
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      Have you ever actually ridden with someone under the influence? In contrast to alcohol (or caffeine, among other things) they're generally much less prone to road rage, much less prone to hurried or reckless behavior, and often somewhat paranoid. At least in my personal experience they're more likely to drive under the speed limit than over it. I strongly suspect that it increases road safety on the whole.
      - HideousKojima 2y ago
        It appears to be less dangerous than driving drunk, but still quite a bit worse than driving sober: https://instituteofliving.org/health-wellness/news/newsroom-detail?articleId=38108&publicid=472 https://instituteofliving.org/health-wellness/news/newsroom-...
        fc417fc802 2y ago
        I would accuse that article of serious problems due to potentially very misleading statistics. The entire claim comes down to a single unsubstantiated quote. > The odds of being involved in a motor vehicle crash when driving ‘stoned’ are approximately double those of sober driving, but significantly less than the 10 to 15 times increase when driving with a blood alcohol concentration of approximately 0.1, That statistic doesn't account for conditional probability. At any given time of day, the set of people consuming recreational drugs have a significantly different distribution of group membership than the inverse of that set. I am reasonably confident that it constitutes a fatal flaw in this case. > during the pandemic, fatally injured and non-fatally injured drivers “have demonstrated significantly higher overall drug prevalence.” That doesn't tell us anything since what we would need is the numbers relative to trips without incident normalized for historical driving behavior of the individuals queried. (I realize that would be a nearly impossible dataset to obtain. That doesn't make the presented statement correct though.)
- os2warpman 2y ago
  Not Just Bikes is wrong about several things: The video states at 1:37: "Baltimore was supposed to install 10 miles of new bike lanes downtown, but the fire department said that would make the streets too small for its trucks and aggressively fought against the plan." This is false. The residents of Potomac Street (the visual example given in the video) aggressively lobbied against the bike lanes because they would take away parking spots. The residents involved the Fire Marshalls. The Fire Marshalls noted that the street would be 19 feet wide and the fire code called for 20 foot streets and, enforcing the law, they said the project needed to be paused until an exemption was granted. Then the exemption was granted. Then the bike lanes got built. Here they are, right here, clear as day: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hKNb82Ef6sWL4uUw5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/hKNb82Ef6sWL4uUw5 I even aligned the streeview image to extremely close to the exact position the video showed at the timestamp where the narrator said "was supposed to install". I knew they were wrong about Baltimore because while I am not a BFD employee I am a both a volunteer firefighter in an exurb of Baltimore and a cyclist, so I followed the development of bike lanes in the area very closely. I figured that if the video was wrong about Baltimore, they probably just googled "fire department oppose bike paths" and used the article titles as references so I looked up the Peekskill story. The narrator states at 2:12, explicitly including the Peekskill Esther Place pedestrian mall, "all of this potential progress WAS LOST". "Was lost" implying it is gone. Kaput. Erased. Esther Place still exists. Here is a city council meeting bill from two months ago explicitly extending the road closure: https://www.cityofpeekskillny.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1392?fileID=9066 https://www.cityofpeekskillny.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item... Also, there is no evidence of the fire department raising any objections to it except for a strongtowns.org blog post, and the youtube channel and the website appear to be the same entity. So now I'm like "is the entire video bullshit"? edit: I must be trippin because I know that European cities with narrow medieval streets have smaller fire trucks, but the dimensions for the Scania P460, a common euro-spec fire truck and MAN TGM (a fire truck used by a Dutch volunteer fire company youtube channel I follow) and a Pierce Saber (a normal, typical US-spec fire truck) are damn near identical except for a custom variation in length with US trucks being about 5 feet longer-- hardly a radical difference. Consider at front and rear axle loads, not how your eyes perceive their sizes.
  - artimaeis 2y ago
- ungreased0675 2y ago
  I’m American, but currently in one of those European places with delightfully narrow roads. In my opinion, it’s more dangerous because people drive just as fast, with less margin for error. Having experienced both, I think “narrow roads are safer” is an anti-car meme from people who wouldn’t mind if driving was as miserable as possible.
  - wahern 2y ago
    It feels more dangerous, but that sense of danger is what improves safety. It's when people, especially drivers, feel comfortable that accidents increase; they let their guard down. The US has dramatically higher rates of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities and injuries than Western European countries, both per capita and per kilometers walked and cycled, and that's presumably with those countries having more narrow roads.[1] See, e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227927/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227927/ Japan falls somewhere between the US and EU. But since the elderly are at far higher risk of both injury and especially fatalities, the larger elderly demographic might have something to do with it. That sense of danger is it's own legitimate issue, though, and as someone with two small kids I'm definitely a proponent of separating pedestrian and cyclist traffic from cars, and even cyclists from pedestrians.[2] [1] The lived density in the US isn't that different from Europe. There's plenty of analysis showing that. But I haven't seen rigorous data and analysis comparing road layouts, traffic patterns, and their association with pedestrian and cyclist accidents rates writ large (as opposed to local studies), thus the conjecture. [2] Cyclists in the US are incredibly aggressive. I've never been hit by a car, but I've been hit twice by cyclists while crossing the street, and nearly a third by one going so fast I definitely could have been killed. (It does happen--cyclists killing pedestrians, albeit usually the elderly.) Two of those three incidents the cyclist was going the wrong way down a one-way, and while ever since the first crash I habitually look both ways crossing a one-way, the third incident happened just as I was turning my head to look in the reverse direction while stepping off the curb--they were flying down the (flat) road the wrong way while also hugging the curb. (FWIW, I was crossing at a busy crosswalk downtown, not jaywalking.) While drivers are liable to be negligent, cyclists of all ages seem much more often to be wantonly reckless.
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a3FgH9Lp 2y ago
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- bruce511 2y ago
  In an earlier life I was an airport fireman. It was in the late 80's so I'm pretty sure things have changed, but physics stays the same. Firstly the engines on these beasts are massive. My truck had 4500 gallons of water and 500 gallons of foam. It could go 60mph in a (very) straight line (that's what taxi ways are for) but acceleration and breaking were ponderous. We had another vehicle carrying 500 gallons, with a huge twin-turbo motor, which had insane acceleration and could do 100mph. It's job was to get there first, dump suppressant quickly and get out the way in the 20 seconds before I got there. Couple things I remember- these things go fast, but corner badly, so one slows down a lot before turning. Water is really dangerous to transport because it sloshes around moving the center of gravity. Best to drive with water tanks full or empty. If they're only partially full you drive really slowly around corners. Like walking speed. Not surprisingly they were almost always 100% full. Mine had pretty much 0% suspension. I took a shortcut once and hit a dirt ripple made by a recent grader. Maybe 8 inches high. The jolt was so bad the plastic light covers popped off the flashing lights. The guy in the roof well almost got thrown overboard. Honestly, I was 18 years old and it was tremendously good fun. But I will say that the car accidents we attended turned me into a cautious driver. And I font need to "go fast" in a car - thats pretty tame compared to going fast in a 36 ton truck.
ourmandave 2y ago
Back in the late '70s my dad bought a retired 1942 pumper fire truck from the city. Back then it was sealed bids submitting to the city. He was the only one who bid on it. I assume today you could buy an airport one from a government auction site.
- xattt 2y ago
  The fill-ups would probably financially ruin anyone that doesn’t have access to bulk Jet A.
- PotatoNinja 2y ago
  https://www.govplanet.com/for-sale/Emergency-Vehicles-1985-Oshkosh-A%2FS32P-19A-4x4-Fire-Truck-Oregon/13010158/NSN/4210-00-627-4063 https://www.govplanet.com/for-sale/Emergency-Vehicles-1985-O...
paddy_m 2y ago
Another note about fire trucks. There has been a large private equity roll up of fire truck manufacturers resulting in longer lead times and much higher prices. [1] I was surprised when I specifically checked on Pierce that they are owned by Oshkosh and publicly traded. [2][3] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/fire-engines-shortage-private-equity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/fire-engines-shortage-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_Manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_Manufacturing [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_Corporation
- mindcrime 2y ago
  It really is insane how much prices have increased. Now granted, I've been gone from the fire service for a while (20+ years now) but still. The last new engine I helped spec out back about 1999, cost less than $250,000. The one prior to that (about 1994) cost somewhere around $150,000 IIRC. Now departments are, from the scuttlebutt I hear, routinely paying more than $1,000,000 for an engine. Of course there are differences (engines are not fungible) but broadly speaking, the idea of any normal fire engine costing more than $1,000,000 just leaves me gob-smacked. Even $500,000 would seem outlandish to me. Also, yes, lead times have gotten nutty. I recall chatting with a battalion chief from Chapel Hill (NC) FD one day a couple of years ago, and he was telling me they had two new trucks on order (since delivered) that were going to wind up taking somewhere on the order of two years from order to delivery (I don't recall what the exact timeline wound up being, but I'm pretty sure it was not "earlier than expected"). I believe parts for repairs have been impacted in a similar fashion. No hard evidence on that point, but again, going from scuttlebutt and random conversations with friends who are still involved in the fire service.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Normal cars also cost somewhere around 4x as much since then. It's inflation.
  - basch 2y ago
    Inflation doubles every 30 years right? So 250k in 1999, is almost 500k in 2029. 500k shouldnt seem outlandish, if 250k wasnt. (I believe 1999-2025 is ~92% so 250=480.)
the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
I always love how futuristic they look: https://youtu.be/8weVJBGDpHI?si=mfIkPEgm44fSLQcc https://youtu.be/8weVJBGDpHI?si=mfIkPEgm44fSLQcc Also here halfway through it: https://youtu.be/9z1qetAaiBA?si=j78gg2HmUg-jCnTS https://youtu.be/9z1qetAaiBA?si=j78gg2HmUg-jCnTS
Animats 2y ago
CAL FIRE has their own specialized fire trucks.[1] California has a huge number of wildfires, all over a big state.[2] CAL FIRE has about 3,000 pieces of equipment. Current CAL FIRE trucks are 4 wheel drive off-road heavy trucks. They're shorter than municipal or airport trucks, for dirt roads with tight turns. They use a 500 gallon tank with a foam system. [1] https://www.fire.ca.gov/what-we-do/fire-protection/mobile-equipment https://www.fire.ca.gov/what-we-do/fire-protection/mobile-eq... [2] https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents
- wongarsu 2y ago
  It's curious that even when length is a concern they still went with bonneted trucks instead of the cab-over-engine design that dominates Europe because of length and maneuverability considerations. Compare for example these French forest fire trucks: http://www.sides.fr/en/french-standardised-vehicles/ http://www.sides.fr/en/french-standardised-vehicles/ Or this range of vehicles from a Spanish manufacturer: https://www.iturri.com/en/vehicles/emergencies-and-fire-fighting/wildfire/ https://www.iturri.com/en/vehicles/emergencies-and-fire-figh... Probably another example of path dependence?
  - floatrock 2y ago
    No thoughts on this maneuverability debate and totally respect the firefighters in every country, but just chuckling that the trucks on that french page literally look like cute little toys. The photos might have some tilt-shift-like effect going on.
    - tacticus 2y ago
      Proportionally they're fine when you look at window and door sizes. They're just short wheelbase 4/8 tonne trucks with a dual cab. You see them fairly often here in .au driven by tradies who actually understand what they need to use for work and entertainingly smaller, easier to park, and have a cargo capacity larger than the shitty utes that all the accountants drive
    - Symbiote 2y ago
taeric 2y ago
The picture that shows the difference in visibility is a bit misleading due to a very different perspective? I'm assuming the visibility difference is still quite different, but it feels like one of the pictures is the perspective of someone in the back seat, as it were.
Paddywack 2y ago
I randomly bought a fire truck a few months ago. I was looking for something to convert into a camper van, and found my truck: (A) low mileage, compared to other trucks because of the usage. Ambulances etc. are super high mileage. (B) they have excellent maintenance, so it’s ship shape (C) low comparable purchase cost due to tiny resale market. I’m loving it. Kids love it. Community loves it. Wife tolerates it. Converted it into a camper and party truck!
- wubrr 2y ago
  You should write a an article/share some pics :) Wondering how it went overall, how hard parts were to find, how hard maintenance is - do you do it yourself? Do you need special tools?
  - Paddywack 2y ago
    I may write a post. A lot of the effort was removing weight without killing the aesthetics. It has been an awesome outlet for creativity and fiddling. I have built everything myself, with input from tradies - everyone just loves helping. Maintanance I leave to the mechanics. So far it has (a) back bench converted into sleeper area (b) slushie machines, foam machine, beer keg pourer, slide out bbq (c) built a roof that you can sleep in. (D) roof lifts with linear actuators to expose dj lights/smoke machine in the centre (e) plumbing / electrics etc so we can use off-grid. It has heaps of storage space and is super fun and easy to drive!
    - wubrr 2y ago
      Very cool, thanks for sharing!
AStonesThrow 2y ago
If you ever find yourself visiting Phoenix, and there’s 4+ hours open in your itinerary, I strongly recommend the Hall of Flame Fire Museum! https://maps.app.goo.gl/athmHCH2AG4sWk8F6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/athmHCH2AG4sWk8F6 Among their exhibits is a 300-year-old wagon, and basically this is a gigantic warehouse and boneyard for old fire trucks and equipment which has been lovingly restored to pristine conditions. There are plenty of memorials for deceased firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives, and there's special memorial for the Hot Shots who perished in Yarnell several years back.

100 points by taubek 2y ago

In the US, Airport fire operations have their own NFPA Standard https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-440-standard-development/440 https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-440-standard-d... And their own standard for fire fighter qualification https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-1003-standard-development/1003 https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/nfpa-1003-standard-...

potato3732842 2y ago

The airport truck is gonna be operated in a different regulatory setting under different incentives than the municipal truck. That counts for something.

nayuki 2y ago

Somewhat related, Not Just Bikes / Jason Slaughter talked about how large fire trucks create the need for wide roads, which enables normal car drivers to go at dangerously high speeds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2dHFC31VtQ (27m24s) [2024-08-11]

jonpurdy 2y ago
It's absolutely nuts to me that US cities (like in Sunset in SF with 50 foot wide roads) accommodate giant fire trucks in addition to both sides having street parking (and driveways and garages!) instead of having narrower roads with smaller trucks (like in Netherlands and Japan, which were discussed in that video). NJB also has a video※ about Japan's tiny streets (relative to USA) that elaborates on how a single factory (street width) can improve so much about a place. ※ - https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U https://youtu.be/jlwQ2Y4By0U
- Spooky23 2y ago
  That’s mostly myth. San Francisco’s plan was built wide to accommodate streetcars and to reduce the spread of fire. The city was razed by fire after the 1906 earthquake, with several reasons (including a lunatic army contingent that built “firebreaks” by blowing up buildings and the fire chief getting killed in a freak accident early on) contributing. There’s a great book called “San Francisco is burning” worth reading. My dad was a fire chief for decades in a city department. They only cared about street width in central business districts or other areas where certain types of aerial ladders were required for rescue companies. If they can’t get a ladder up, they need more firemen to respond to certain calls. Cities are insured and firemen DNGAF if they smash up cars on narrow streets, I suspect they find it fun.
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    On the other hand San Francisco has these giant articulated aerial ladder trucks. European trucks reach the same ladder heights on much smaller trucks by having more telescoping segments on the ladder. I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of it is a feedback loop: wide streets mean fire trucks can be big, big fire trucks mean streets have to be big (even if only the streets the fire department cares about)
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Edinburgh's new town (designed 1776) has some very wide streets. When cars were invented they became handy because two cars could be parked nose to nose across the middle of the street plus the usual curb parking on both sides, still leaving room for four lanes of traffic. Traffic calming and pavement|sidewalk widening measures in recent years have reduced this to one vehicle across the middle, curb parking and one lane each way.
- reneherse 2y ago
  Check out the Village Homes subdivision in Davis, CA. It was designed with narrow streets and off street parking so that trees could more effectively shade the pavement. Also, the paved streets alternate with bike and walking paths between rows of houses. One result of the shaded streets and increased greenery is ambient summer temperature that is noticably cooler compared to other nearby neighborhoods. The original planners worked with the local FD to make sure their trucks could turn around in the cul de sacs. https://maps.apple.com/?address=Village%20Homes,%20Davis,%20CA,%20United%20States&auid=10746652270401562085&ll=38.550601,-121.780216&lsp=7618&q=Village%20Homes&t=h https://maps.apple.com/?address=Village%20Homes,%20Davis,%20...
marcosdumay 2y ago
Just to point, and as the video say, it's not the trucks that create the need. Just because your city have some large trucks to send where hydrants are rare, it doesn't mean you need to design the entire city so they can fit.
Spooky23 2y ago
They open with the sharp increase in pedestrian deaths and zero in on fire trucks. Weird. Firetrucks haven’t changed since 2010. Pickup truck expansion, embracing poor driver controls and visibility, and the abandonment of traffic enforcement has. I think a shuffle of fire department equipment may be warranted as EMS has overtaken fire calls, but accommodation of these things is one of a list of many factors.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  The percentage of the population smoking weed has also roughly doubled in that time, as another likely contributing factor
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    Have you ever actually ridden with someone under the influence? In contrast to alcohol (or caffeine, among other things) they're generally much less prone to road rage, much less prone to hurried or reckless behavior, and often somewhat paranoid. At least in my personal experience they're more likely to drive under the speed limit than over it. I strongly suspect that it increases road safety on the whole.
    - HideousKojima 2y ago
      It appears to be less dangerous than driving drunk, but still quite a bit worse than driving sober: https://instituteofliving.org/health-wellness/news/newsroom-detail?articleId=38108&publicid=472 https://instituteofliving.org/health-wellness/news/newsroom-...
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        I would accuse that article of serious problems due to potentially very misleading statistics. The entire claim comes down to a single unsubstantiated quote. > The odds of being involved in a motor vehicle crash when driving ‘stoned’ are approximately double those of sober driving, but significantly less than the 10 to 15 times increase when driving with a blood alcohol concentration of approximately 0.1, That statistic doesn't account for conditional probability. At any given time of day, the set of people consuming recreational drugs have a significantly different distribution of group membership than the inverse of that set. I am reasonably confident that it constitutes a fatal flaw in this case. > during the pandemic, fatally injured and non-fatally injured drivers “have demonstrated significantly higher overall drug prevalence.” That doesn't tell us anything since what we would need is the numbers relative to trips without incident normalized for historical driving behavior of the individuals queried. (I realize that would be a nearly impossible dataset to obtain. That doesn't make the presented statement correct though.)
os2warpman 2y ago
Not Just Bikes is wrong about several things: The video states at 1:37: "Baltimore was supposed to install 10 miles of new bike lanes downtown, but the fire department said that would make the streets too small for its trucks and aggressively fought against the plan." This is false. The residents of Potomac Street (the visual example given in the video) aggressively lobbied against the bike lanes because they would take away parking spots. The residents involved the Fire Marshalls. The Fire Marshalls noted that the street would be 19 feet wide and the fire code called for 20 foot streets and, enforcing the law, they said the project needed to be paused until an exemption was granted. Then the exemption was granted. Then the bike lanes got built. Here they are, right here, clear as day: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hKNb82Ef6sWL4uUw5 https://maps.app.goo.gl/hKNb82Ef6sWL4uUw5 I even aligned the streeview image to extremely close to the exact position the video showed at the timestamp where the narrator said "was supposed to install". I knew they were wrong about Baltimore because while I am not a BFD employee I am a both a volunteer firefighter in an exurb of Baltimore and a cyclist, so I followed the development of bike lanes in the area very closely. I figured that if the video was wrong about Baltimore, they probably just googled "fire department oppose bike paths" and used the article titles as references so I looked up the Peekskill story. The narrator states at 2:12, explicitly including the Peekskill Esther Place pedestrian mall, "all of this potential progress WAS LOST". "Was lost" implying it is gone. Kaput. Erased. Esther Place still exists. Here is a city council meeting bill from two months ago explicitly extending the road closure: https://www.cityofpeekskillny.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1392?fileID=9066 https://www.cityofpeekskillny.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item... Also, there is no evidence of the fire department raising any objections to it except for a strongtowns.org blog post, and the youtube channel and the website appear to be the same entity. So now I'm like "is the entire video bullshit"? edit: I must be trippin because I know that European cities with narrow medieval streets have smaller fire trucks, but the dimensions for the Scania P460, a common euro-spec fire truck and MAN TGM (a fire truck used by a Dutch volunteer fire company youtube channel I follow) and a Pierce Saber (a normal, typical US-spec fire truck) are damn near identical except for a custom variation in length with US trucks being about 5 feet longer-- hardly a radical difference. Consider at front and rear axle loads, not how your eyes perceive their sizes.
- artimaeis 2y ago
ungreased0675 2y ago
I’m American, but currently in one of those European places with delightfully narrow roads. In my opinion, it’s more dangerous because people drive just as fast, with less margin for error. Having experienced both, I think “narrow roads are safer” is an anti-car meme from people who wouldn’t mind if driving was as miserable as possible.
- wahern 2y ago
  It feels more dangerous, but that sense of danger is what improves safety. It's when people, especially drivers, feel comfortable that accidents increase; they let their guard down. The US has dramatically higher rates of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities and injuries than Western European countries, both per capita and per kilometers walked and cycled, and that's presumably with those countries having more narrow roads.[1] See, e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227927/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227927/ Japan falls somewhere between the US and EU. But since the elderly are at far higher risk of both injury and especially fatalities, the larger elderly demographic might have something to do with it. That sense of danger is it's own legitimate issue, though, and as someone with two small kids I'm definitely a proponent of separating pedestrian and cyclist traffic from cars, and even cyclists from pedestrians.[2] [1] The lived density in the US isn't that different from Europe. There's plenty of analysis showing that. But I haven't seen rigorous data and analysis comparing road layouts, traffic patterns, and their association with pedestrian and cyclist accidents rates writ large (as opposed to local studies), thus the conjecture. [2] Cyclists in the US are incredibly aggressive. I've never been hit by a car, but I've been hit twice by cyclists while crossing the street, and nearly a third by one going so fast I definitely could have been killed. (It does happen--cyclists killing pedestrians, albeit usually the elderly.) Two of those three incidents the cyclist was going the wrong way down a one-way, and while ever since the first crash I habitually look both ways crossing a one-way, the third incident happened just as I was turning my head to look in the reverse direction while stepping off the curb--they were flying down the (flat) road the wrong way while also hugging the curb. (FWIW, I was crossing at a busy crosswalk downtown, not jaywalking.) While drivers are liable to be negligent, cyclists of all ages seem much more often to be wantonly reckless.
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a3FgH9Lp 2y ago

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bruce511 2y ago
In an earlier life I was an airport fireman. It was in the late 80's so I'm pretty sure things have changed, but physics stays the same. Firstly the engines on these beasts are massive. My truck had 4500 gallons of water and 500 gallons of foam. It could go 60mph in a (very) straight line (that's what taxi ways are for) but acceleration and breaking were ponderous. We had another vehicle carrying 500 gallons, with a huge twin-turbo motor, which had insane acceleration and could do 100mph. It's job was to get there first, dump suppressant quickly and get out the way in the 20 seconds before I got there. Couple things I remember- these things go fast, but corner badly, so one slows down a lot before turning. Water is really dangerous to transport because it sloshes around moving the center of gravity. Best to drive with water tanks full or empty. If they're only partially full you drive really slowly around corners. Like walking speed. Not surprisingly they were almost always 100% full. Mine had pretty much 0% suspension. I took a shortcut once and hit a dirt ripple made by a recent grader. Maybe 8 inches high. The jolt was so bad the plastic light covers popped off the flashing lights. The guy in the roof well almost got thrown overboard. Honestly, I was 18 years old and it was tremendously good fun. But I will say that the car accidents we attended turned me into a cautious driver. And I font need to "go fast" in a car - thats pretty tame compared to going fast in a 36 ton truck.

ourmandave 2y ago

Back in the late '70s my dad bought a retired 1942 pumper fire truck from the city. Back then it was sealed bids submitting to the city. He was the only one who bid on it. I assume today you could buy an airport one from a government auction site.

xattt 2y ago
The fill-ups would probably financially ruin anyone that doesn’t have access to bulk Jet A.
PotatoNinja 2y ago
https://www.govplanet.com/for-sale/Emergency-Vehicles-1985-Oshkosh-A%2FS32P-19A-4x4-Fire-Truck-Oregon/13010158/NSN/4210-00-627-4063 https://www.govplanet.com/for-sale/Emergency-Vehicles-1985-O...

paddy_m 2y ago

Another note about fire trucks. There has been a large private equity roll up of fire truck manufacturers resulting in longer lead times and much higher prices. [1] I was surprised when I specifically checked on Pierce that they are owned by Oshkosh and publicly traded. [2][3] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/fire-engines-shortage-private-equity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/fire-engines-shortage-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_Manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_Manufacturing [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_Corporation

mindcrime 2y ago
It really is insane how much prices have increased. Now granted, I've been gone from the fire service for a while (20+ years now) but still. The last new engine I helped spec out back about 1999, cost less than $250,000. The one prior to that (about 1994) cost somewhere around $150,000 IIRC. Now departments are, from the scuttlebutt I hear, routinely paying more than $1,000,000 for an engine. Of course there are differences (engines are not fungible) but broadly speaking, the idea of any normal fire engine costing more than $1,000,000 just leaves me gob-smacked. Even $500,000 would seem outlandish to me. Also, yes, lead times have gotten nutty. I recall chatting with a battalion chief from Chapel Hill (NC) FD one day a couple of years ago, and he was telling me they had two new trucks on order (since delivered) that were going to wind up taking somewhere on the order of two years from order to delivery (I don't recall what the exact timeline wound up being, but I'm pretty sure it was not "earlier than expected"). I believe parts for repairs have been impacted in a similar fashion. No hard evidence on that point, but again, going from scuttlebutt and random conversations with friends who are still involved in the fire service.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Normal cars also cost somewhere around 4x as much since then. It's inflation.
- basch 2y ago
  Inflation doubles every 30 years right? So 250k in 1999, is almost 500k in 2029. 500k shouldnt seem outlandish, if 250k wasnt. (I believe 1999-2025 is ~92% so 250=480.)

the_mitsuhiko 2y ago

I always love how futuristic they look: https://youtu.be/8weVJBGDpHI?si=mfIkPEgm44fSLQcc https://youtu.be/8weVJBGDpHI?si=mfIkPEgm44fSLQcc Also here halfway through it: https://youtu.be/9z1qetAaiBA?si=j78gg2HmUg-jCnTS https://youtu.be/9z1qetAaiBA?si=j78gg2HmUg-jCnTS

Animats 2y ago

CAL FIRE has their own specialized fire trucks.[1] California has a huge number of wildfires, all over a big state.[2] CAL FIRE has about 3,000 pieces of equipment. Current CAL FIRE trucks are 4 wheel drive off-road heavy trucks. They're shorter than municipal or airport trucks, for dirt roads with tight turns. They use a 500 gallon tank with a foam system. [1] https://www.fire.ca.gov/what-we-do/fire-protection/mobile-equipment https://www.fire.ca.gov/what-we-do/fire-protection/mobile-eq... [2] https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents

wongarsu 2y ago
It's curious that even when length is a concern they still went with bonneted trucks instead of the cab-over-engine design that dominates Europe because of length and maneuverability considerations. Compare for example these French forest fire trucks: http://www.sides.fr/en/french-standardised-vehicles/ http://www.sides.fr/en/french-standardised-vehicles/ Or this range of vehicles from a Spanish manufacturer: https://www.iturri.com/en/vehicles/emergencies-and-fire-fighting/wildfire/ https://www.iturri.com/en/vehicles/emergencies-and-fire-figh... Probably another example of path dependence?
- floatrock 2y ago
  No thoughts on this maneuverability debate and totally respect the firefighters in every country, but just chuckling that the trucks on that french page literally look like cute little toys. The photos might have some tilt-shift-like effect going on.
  - tacticus 2y ago
    Proportionally they're fine when you look at window and door sizes. They're just short wheelbase 4/8 tonne trucks with a dual cab. You see them fairly often here in .au driven by tradies who actually understand what they need to use for work and entertainingly smaller, easier to park, and have a cargo capacity larger than the shitty utes that all the accountants drive
  - Symbiote 2y ago

taeric 2y ago

The picture that shows the difference in visibility is a bit misleading due to a very different perspective? I'm assuming the visibility difference is still quite different, but it feels like one of the pictures is the perspective of someone in the back seat, as it were.

Paddywack 2y ago

I randomly bought a fire truck a few months ago. I was looking for something to convert into a camper van, and found my truck: (A) low mileage, compared to other trucks because of the usage. Ambulances etc. are super high mileage. (B) they have excellent maintenance, so it’s ship shape (C) low comparable purchase cost due to tiny resale market. I’m loving it. Kids love it. Community loves it. Wife tolerates it. Converted it into a camper and party truck!

wubrr 2y ago
You should write a an article/share some pics :) Wondering how it went overall, how hard parts were to find, how hard maintenance is - do you do it yourself? Do you need special tools?
- Paddywack 2y ago
  I may write a post. A lot of the effort was removing weight without killing the aesthetics. It has been an awesome outlet for creativity and fiddling. I have built everything myself, with input from tradies - everyone just loves helping. Maintanance I leave to the mechanics. So far it has (a) back bench converted into sleeper area (b) slushie machines, foam machine, beer keg pourer, slide out bbq (c) built a roof that you can sleep in. (D) roof lifts with linear actuators to expose dj lights/smoke machine in the centre (e) plumbing / electrics etc so we can use off-grid. It has heaps of storage space and is super fun and easy to drive!
  - wubrr 2y ago
    Very cool, thanks for sharing!

AStonesThrow 2y ago

If you ever find yourself visiting Phoenix, and there’s 4+ hours open in your itinerary, I strongly recommend the Hall of Flame Fire Museum! https://maps.app.goo.gl/athmHCH2AG4sWk8F6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/athmHCH2AG4sWk8F6 Among their exhibits is a 300-year-old wagon, and basically this is a gigantic warehouse and boneyard for old fire trucks and equipment which has been lovingly restored to pristine conditions. There are plenty of memorials for deceased firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives, and there's special memorial for the Hot Shots who perished in Yarnell several years back.