Kansas City area fire apparatus

[MFD76]

[quote name='MFD 61 KS' post='294827' date='Apr 5 2009, 15:24 ']Where to start,

Yes KCFD has tweleve trucks and Truck 2,3,6,11,12,15 are all Towers 95ft. Truck 2,3,11,12 have the new soild red towers. Truck 13 is in a 1996 100ft Sutphen Tower. Truck 4 is a 100ft Quint and Trucks 5,7,8,10 are Dry 100ft Tillers. The current fire chief came from one of our suburbs and really likes Tower Quints so the department can met NFPA 1710. He hates Tillers an want to reduce KCFD to only three in the mid-twon area. Now some of the Towers don't have hose in the beds and I can almost bet the tanks are dry. The truck companys work group recommended returning to a Tillered fleet in 2006 but the chief had already got the Labor Management committe to back the Tower Quints. So they might look like quints but they run as trucks and the pull up at working fires and DO NOT streach lines. At a fire the Truck splits and Captain and FF are search and the FAO and FF or Tillerman are vertical vent. KCFD does very little PPV. I will imagine that the Tillers will return after the cheif retires.



The 75ft Quints are dead and sold. The current Chief does not believe in Quints and has stated that 75ft ladders have no place in a moderate to large city, so Quint 41 and 44 returned to Pumpers 41 and 44 and Truck 15 was reopened. Truck 14, 15 were disbanded in 1979 when the 100ft Seagrave Quints came to KCFD.



Truck both Tillered 1, 9 were disbanded in 1997 when the Rescue concept was adopted. It is very sad because Truck 1 was the oldest inservice company in the city they even outlasted pumper 2 that became pumper 3.



Truck 4 was disbanded at Fire House Seven in 1979-1980 and was reopened in 1999 at the new Fire House Three way north.



There was talk of reopening Truck 1 downtown due to the redevelopment, however with the current money issues I beleive it has be tabled. Also a Truck will be added at FH44 when it is rebuilt and then Truck 4 will move to FH14. I believe the new truck at FH44 will be Truck 14 because it was the northland Truck before begin disbanded at FH38 in 1979. As Truck 15 was the southland Truck before being disbanded in 1979 at FH28.



New Fire Houses, Fire House 14 for Pumper 14 and Car 103 and a future Truck in the northland near Liberty is an addtion but all others have been rebuilds[/quote]

Squads and Rescues,

KCFD developed this plan called the Fire Improvment Plan in the mid 1970's it screwed a number of things up in the fire department and taken years to undo. First was to change the fire units to white over lime-green.

Second was to reduce the fire houses from forty-five to thrity-three. Then build large double Pumper houses with a Truck so the fire units could carvan to fires. Only 7, 10, 17, 18 ever became double pumper with a truck houses and now all have returned to single pumpers with a truck. 17's has Rescue 31 with them also.

Third all firemen were moved from 24hr shift to an 8hr day rotation and a complete fourth shift was hired. All beds were removed from the fire houses and new fire houses were built with no bunkrooms No sleeping allowed. This lasted three years and then the 24hr shift returned and postions were elemanted through retirement. In recent years bunkrooms were added to Fire House 7,4 before guys just slept any where. During the eight hour day the fire units had to drive the city at all hours this made a tired fleet even more tired and also made the new Seagrave's wear out faster than normal.

Fourth was to disband Truck 4, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15 and Pumper 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28, 38 and Quad 42. Remember the Crash rigs at KCI were Pumper 3,5,15 during this time. They purchased these really big 100ft Seagrave Quints and GMC C-65 E\-One Midi Pumpers. So after all the closing Truck 14 and Pumper 38 became Quint and Squad 38, Truck 15 and Pumper 28 became Quint and Squad 28, Truck 8,12,13 became Quints 8, 12, 13 and remained with their pumpers at 37, 6, 39's, Quad 42 became Quint and Squad 42 later in 1990 they moved to 41's, Pumper 27 was reduced to a two man Squad 27. New companys included Squad 10, Squad 16, Pumper 16. They ended up with six Squads and six Quints the rest of the Truck fleet was Tillered. The midi Squads were really worthless and just mainly ran EMS the GMC's were replaced in 1993 by red Freightliner/ E-Ones. This concept of Qunit Squads lasted until 1996 when it was determined the program should be ended. They kept three Quints 28,38,41 and made them stand alone with 75ft ladders and ran the wheels off. This proved to be too much weight on a single axle and they were always in the shop. That was the saving grace of the Squads they kept the milage off the Quints.

The fire improvment plan was dead in 1985 but as you can see it took years to get away from.

So Rescues in 1995 Truck 3 was a 1990 Sutphen Tower they were running one of the spare 100ft Seagrave Quints. They were at a working fire and the ladder failed while fly piping with a man on the tip. Now remember these were med duty ladders and the FAO had the ladder at a 45 degree angle flowing water with a man on the tip. This was way outside the operating instructions for this type of ladder. Up until 1995 the fleet of Trucks was never tested due to the fact most ladders were built prior to NFPA 1901 non destructive testing standard. So due to this accident all the ladders were tested and over half failed the test. The chief was in a big pinch and decided to Convert Truck 1, 9 to Rescue 1, 9 and all double Pumpers 12, 11, 31 to Rescue 12, 11, 31 and combine all Squads 10, 27, 41, 28, 16, 38 to create Rescue 7, 16. These were big box trucks that looked like rescues but were really manpower carriers. Rescue 1, 9, 7, 16 were city service Truck Companies with full ground ladders and Rescue 11, 12, 31 were box trucks. Rescue 7 was numbered this way because there were seven rescues total in the department. Yes the consultant recommed that they move to three real rescues so Rescue 1, 9, 31 remained and all others were disbanded and were used to reopen Truck 15. Staffing on the Rescues now is six 1 capt., 2 FAO, 3 FFs. The chief wanted to call them 1,2,3 but labor managment said no way because it would open all the postions for rebiding and if you know KCFD some fire houses are a closed bid to only firemen that are hand picked to work there.