Detroit Fire Department to finally receive new apparatus

[Guest]

Love to hear more on this. It would be awesome if the preference of the men had some persuasion in the decision. Unless they planned on some sort of operational change of the squad companies I don't see why you would want to entertain such a drastic change to the apparatus. They operate as a true rescue co. That is a grt manpower tool for they're needs. Changing the apparatus to a rescue pumper inevitably almost changes they're job discription imo.

 

Change in leadership saw this as what it was simply a way to add engine companies while loosing a key fire ground resource.  I'm sure city hall and Department leadership would have showed these off as new rescue pumpers.

 

The voters would absolutely love seeing new pumpers and quite frankly would have almost zero knowledge of why they were marked Rescue.  Just like a quint, these would have been terribly confused units on day one.  In DFD

it means more than likely they would have been used as engines more often than rescues.  Gradually turning into hybrid engine companies and elimination of the true DFD Rescue.  IMHO

 

Not that I have a problem putting a pump on a rescue, that's fine but here it was a red hearing.  Masking a rescue as a engine company.

 

Will be interesting to see what happens for new Rescues and the eventual specs, that is if SVI get's the job again or Smeal or someone else.  Those Spartan SVI's have held up amazingly well for the lack of maintenance and abuse they take.  My contacts in DFD have varying opinions on the Pierce trucks, definitely better than what they had (ALF) but also some real issues.  My personal take is that Pierce was no slam dunk with the guys on the job.  Most of all the guys really want a rig that works day in and day out and when its down the mfg is there to help get it fixed.

 

Having experience with Pierce and Smeal local dealers, I can say I've heard of and witnessed much better service out of the Smeal dealer (Going above and beyond to fix a rig).  But as they say every side has a story and each customer's mileage may vary.

 

Kris