Baltimore Tower Ladder

[johndanger]

Anyone know anything about the new Pierce tower ladder delivered to Baltimore? It's lettered for Truck 81 which I thought was a reserve company. This has got to be the only tower ladder since the Sutphens, no?

[TacSupport1]

These photos were just posted on Facebook. I apologize if you've already seen them.

 

https://www.facebook.com/atlanticemergen...0970890356

[amcare38]

Baltimore City still has Truck 51, the 1994 Seagrave Snorkel. While not a true tower ladder, it's not a stick either. Perhaps the new Pierce tower is it's replacement........

[johndanger]

Baltimore City still has Truck 51, the 1994 Seagrave Snorkel. While not a true tower ladder, it's not a stick either. Perhaps the new Pierce tower is it's replacement........

 

That's what I was trying to figure out, if they bought this as a dedicated "water tower."

[alex3610]

This ladder tower will probably be a disappointment if it's meant to act as a water tower, especially replacing a Snorkel.  We had a 95' mid mount Pierce platform assigned to my company and I was astonished at how bad the low angle ability was off the sides.  Essentially to do what they are doing in the picture, there was an area of maybe 5-8 degrees of rotation off either side that you could lower the aerial below horizontal.  It also took a long distance between the basket and the truck to sit it on the ground.  Some of it was due to the design of the torque box and outriggers simply being in the way.  Part of it was the collision avoidance system was pretty crude (this may have been improved on since our 06' model but I don't know).  The 360 degree arc was divided up in to a few zones and then each zone had lower elevation limits.  Since the zones were rather large, there were positions that the ladder could physically go into but wasn't allowed to because one edge of the zone contained an obstacle.  Pretty frustrating.

 

 Comparing it to previous experience with an LTI 93 and an Aerialscope, it sucked.  Not doing much "sidewalk sweep" action unless you are positioned perfectly and need to do so in a very narrow area.  We also had a 100' Pierce rear mount and it was much more useful in this respect (and others).  Prior to the ascendant stuff being released, I felt this was far and away the worst aerial in Pierce's lineup.  I hope they have better luck with it than we did with ours.

[drfeelgood]

I will say with our 2004 Pierce MMP we were trained to do a good negative sweep you would have to tilt the truck -5 degrees to the side you were working off of which as unnatural as it looked it was designed to do that. With that being said it takes a lot of time to reset up a truck if you have to go to a negative sweep after using it normally. I would be more concerned if it will hold up to a city like Baltimore's call volume, road conditions, and etc? I can say after 5 years ours did not which is true from other FD's in the state that bought the same mmp's in that time frame. Lots of aerial commandzone issues plus as everyone knows TAK-4 component failures. Also the volume of flow in the waterway is quite restricted based on it's design and not was what it was told to us by the mfg or dealer. Maybe Pierce figured these issues out but time would tell. Our 04 was a great tower when it worked but it's reliability and Pierce not being able to fix it for good was what caused us to stay away from buying another Pierce aerial.

 

We did have two rmps before the the MMP and they had their own problems as well but we stayed with a mmp for many other valid reasons. 

[alex3610]

We had lots of commandzone aerial issues as well.  They were frustrating as they seemingly happened for no good reason and without warning.  Our streets are some of the worst in the country and ours being a quint it was not a good outcome!  But then again that was no real surprise to those of us in the field, as 82,000 or so pounds on 3 axles driving on cobble stones, old rail road tracks and pot holes that look like the surface of the moon are a recipe for disaster regardless of the truck.  I will say the mmp was the best riding of all our aerials and handled pretty nice all things considered.  There is a lot to be said for the lower center of gravity vs. a RMP.

[hungrybus]

Tower 81 has arrived at The Pierce Service Center in preparation for Delivery. As far as I know this unit will be a ready reserve, but if Baltimore does it right they'll leave it at Oldtowne which is where its going to be housed. and whenever a company needs a reserve, they'll get T1 which is also assigned to Oldtowne.this way only the guys familiar with the Tower run the Tower. But this is Baltimore and they probably wont do it right lol.