The government doesn't make mistakes.
...
Bloody hell, they've gone back to Metric again without telling us.

Let me just be the first to say, EPIC FAIL.

fredbox: Bloody hell, they've gone back to Metric again without telling us.

So who are you, Bill or Charlie?

Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

Decreases service life.

Sell it to a department where it will fit, pay to have new emblems put on it and buy a new one.

dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

WHAT?! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

then it will get rained on and the water will rust right through.

how do expect a fire truck to be able to fight fires when it's covered in rust!?

What? No picture of the thing sticking out of the station house? Fail!

Kahabut: What? No picture of the thing sticking out of the station house? Fail!

Even the local paper the story came from didn't have a picture. :(

dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

Because not every truck has a 100ft ladder/bucket combination that can rust can get people killed?

Also dunno if they have a pump on this thing or what the weather is link in Southern Indiana, but the pump freezing when its cold would be a major concern too...

Pretty much the same thing happened here in my town, only they built the firehouse with doors too low so the trucks smashed into the top of the open doors and everything got destroyed.


Measure twice, cut once boys and girls.

This happens a lot. I see 2 or 3 of these every year.

Is it me or does the link just go to firehouse.com main page?

dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

Because idiots would play on it and assholes would steal from it. Firetrucks tend to have a lot of exposed doo-dads.

// Or at least the ones I have seen.

Britney Spear's Speculum: Is it me or does the link just go to firehouse.com main page?

Yep. Farked.

Britney Spear's Speculum: Is it me or does the link just go to firehouse.com main page?

Me too.

Britney Spear's Speculum: Is it me or does the link just go to firehouse.com main page?

Yeah, it's farked.

AZsid: Britney Spear's Speculum: Is it me or does the link just go to firehouse.com main page?

Yeah, it's farked.

Okay, we can all go read it at the local paper until that gets farked too. :)

Just do what they did in Tunkhannock. Burn the firehouse down!

If it was a KME, they probably built it to the wrong specs. Nothing a blowtorch and a can of touch up paint can't fix.

Solty Dog: If it was a KME, they probably built it to the wrong specs. Nothing a blowtorch and a can of touch up paint can't fix.

Our towns new KME truck became a blowtorch before it got here, I was driving down the highway when I was treated to the sight of the trucks crew using the hoses from the back of the truck to try and put out the fire in the front, man I wish I had brought my camera that day.

TJNII: dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

Because idiots would play on it and assholes would steal from it. Firetrucks tend to have a lot of exposed doo-dads.

// Or at least the ones I have seen.

I lol'd at exposed doo-dads...

/immature

Mmmmmmmmm Firehouse (new window)

<b><a target="_blank" href="http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4741607&IDComment=55636080#c556 36080">Lumber Jack Off</a>:</b> <i>how do expect a fire truck to be able to fight fires when it's covered in rust!?</i>

It sure must be difficult living back in the 1950s where, prior to advances in materials science and personal hygiene, vehicles still rusted and women and women by in large went lifetimes without a trim. Still, on the plus side, I guess you can see the young elvis live and don't have to have suffered through hip-hop.

I wonder if someone said "fire truck"?

"The ladder is up! The ladder...is up!"

So lemme sum up: a town bought a new toy which on paper seemed like a good idea to them, but they didn't check the measurements or their payroll first. So now they've got an expensive machine that can't be housed as intended, nor do they have the staff to use said machine.

That's a whole lot of stupid right there.

Bomb Head Mohammed:

It sure must be difficult living back in the 1950s where, prior to advances in materials science and personal hygiene, vehicles still rusted and women and women by in large went lifetimes without a trim. Still, on the plus side, I guess you can see the young elvis live and don't have to have suffered through hip-hop.

yeah, because clear and protective coating and paint doesn't get worn down or chipped. Especially when crews are running around with axes, polaskis, mcclouds, rubbish hooks, brass fittings, and nozzels.

Wait just a minute here..

You mean to tell me that some town just up and bought a fire truck, just like that? Typically this type of purchase takes a long time, specifications must be reviewed, requests for quotation sent out and evaluated, often inspections are done at the site of the equipment manufacturer.

In small towns the purchase of a fire truck means fundraisers, tax levies, etc.

Even if they fast-tracked the purchase one assumes the process is not instantaneous.

You mean to tell me that this town bought a fire truck without involving anyone from the actual fire department?

Hmm...not too likely.

So while your headline says:

'Firefighters love their new $1 million fire truck, but wish the city had measured the firehouse before ordering it'

...and everyone is supposed to laugh and say 'stupid politicians, up to their shenanigans again...shouldn't it actually say:

Firefighters allow town to go ahead with purchase of $1-million dollar piece of equipment without even checking the specs and making sure it fits in the building they work in every day?

or

Firefighters allow themselves to be totally shut-out of the planning process for their department?

or

Despite the looming purchase of an important piece of equipment for their department, firefighters couldn't be arsed to read the brochure and grab a tape-measure?

Yeesh.

KWess: Wait just a minute here..

D. Someone is angling for a new 5 million dollar firehouse to park it in.

To expand on what Seacop said, fire apparatus takes a beating. Alone in their bays at night, fire trucks dream of the easy lives of dump trucks. All rust aside, fire trucks have control panels, hose connections, and often things like folded hoses, which could be damaged (or vandalized). Then there's the fact that this is in Indiana. Winter temperatures can drop well below freezing. Diesel engines don't like starting in the cold, and unlike other sorts of trucks, fire trucks don't have time to warm up. They need to start now and roll now, not ten minutes from now. Plus there's that 300 gallon water tank ... you do not want the truck to have 300 gallons of ice. Finally, fire trucks need very frequent cleaning and routine maintenance. This is something which is not easy to do in a thunderstorm, a blizzard, or even just a really hot or really cold day.

They're not like every other truck. They undergo hard usage, they have unique vulnerabilities, and the negative payoff when something goes wrong can be dead taxpayers. That's why they're parked in proper facilities. Or should be, unless some wanker doesn't measure the place before they order the truck.

Switch to metric. Problem solved.

Bomb Head Mohammed: <b><a target="_blank" href="http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4741607&IDComment=55636080#c556 36080">Lumber Jack Off</a>:</b> <i>how do expect a fire truck to be able to fight fires when it's covered in rust!?</i>

It sure must be difficult living back in the 1950s where, prior to advances in materials science and personal hygiene, vehicles still rusted and women and women by in large went lifetimes without a trim. Still, on the plus side, I guess you can see the young elvis live and don't have to have suffered through hip-hop.

In the 1950s, fire engines were much, much less complex than they are today, and their service lives were shorter.

As has already been mentioned, people's lives are depending on this equipment. It's both necessary and reasonable to take every possible step to control wear and tear and prevent unauthorized access to a fire engine. Plus there's the basic stuff like pumps freezing, medications freezing or overheating (most fire engines carry medical equipment), the truck windows getting iced over in the winter, and the fact that if you just paid a million bucks for a truck you probably want to keep it in decent shape as long as possible.

That said, it is amazingly stupid that nobody in this planning process ever got around to making sure the truck would fit in one of the cities stations. That should have happened pretty early on, unless Archie Goodwin is right and they were angling for a new firehouse.

They knew exactly what they were doing. This is an attempt to justify a new firehouse.

If this happened in Austin, we'd have a female fire chief saying, "It's too big!".

This happened to a town next to mine here in NJ. Not only did the truck not fit in the fire house, it had trouble making turns on some of the streets. It sat unused for a year then they sold it.

I talked to one of the firemen who says he's heard of this kind of mess before and it's not that uncommon. Which is really sad.

"The door of the Hale Road facility, Station No. 3, had to be raised to get it inside."

Yep, that's Step 1. Someone give 'em a call with the rest.

Take the last train to Clarksville
and I'll meet you at the station
There's a million dollar firetruck
and it's to big to fit the firehouse
Oh no no no...

/all I got.

I am a Volunteer fireman here in Oklahoma and our little department got a grant from Homeland Security for a shiny new Pumper/Tanker. We sent the measurements for our $220,000 truck and 6 months later when we tried to back it in--no deal. It was 6 inches too tall. Had to make a 10 ft tall door 11 feet tall. Truck like they are talking about costs considerably more, so you really want to leave a half million dollar vehicle parked on the street?

dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

The local casino demanded that the country buy a new ladder truck because the old one wasn't tall enough the work on the casino's new high-rise. The county pointed out that A. the casino didn't pay any county taxes B. the truck they wanted wouldn't fit in the station C. without fire protection, they couldn't use the high-rise.

So, after much wailing and dancing around, the casino bought the county the new truck, built a new station near the casino, and will pay for the staffing.

But not as nice as that one.

We had the sales reps make their bid presentations to the members of the department and part of their visit included a tour of the bay where the truck would go.

Think guys....think.

TJNII: dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

Because idiots would play on it and assholes would steal from it. Firetrucks tend to have a lot of exposed doo-dads.

// Or at least the ones I have seen.

My mom used to call my doo dad a doo dad.
/Don't say nuttin about mom

I love how there's always a written policy for buying a common office supplies that requires three people to sign off on the purchase after going through a detailed pre-procurement checklist, consulting with at least two lawyers, several equal rights advocates and a shaman, but spending a million bucks on essential equipment is somehow no biggie and requires little or no planning.

This sort of thing happens all the time. My town bought a new 100' tower truck. It's fits in the station, but there are town roads it can't go on, so they need to keep the old one too.

That's right up there with the Phoenix Fire department crashing their new, huge, milion dollar fire truck less than a month (I think, too lazy to look it up) after they got the thing. Rolled it gioing around a corner.

dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

I don't think you thought your cunning plan all the way through...

SVC_conservative: dbirchall: Why can't a firetruck be parked outside, like... oh, I don't know, any other truck in the world?

Because not every truck has a 100ft ladder/bucket combination that can rust can get people killed?

Also dunno if they have a pump on this thing or what the weather is link in Southern Indiana, but the pump freezing when its cold would be a major concern too...

Worldwalker: To expand on what Seacop said, fire apparatus takes a beating. Alone in their bays at night, fire trucks dream of the easy lives of dump trucks. All rust aside, fire trucks have control panels, hose connections, and often things like folded hoses, which could be damaged (or vandalized). Then there's the fact that this is in Indiana. Winter temperatures can drop well below freezing. Diesel engines don't like starting in the cold, and unlike other sorts of trucks, fire trucks don't have time to warm up. They need to start now and roll now, not ten minutes from now. Plus there's that 300 gallon water tank ... you do not want the truck to have 300 gallons of ice. Finally, fire trucks need very frequent cleaning and routine maintenance. This is something which is not easy to do in a thunderstorm, a blizzard, or even just a really hot or really cold day.

They're not like every other truck. They undergo hard usage, they have unique vulnerabilities, and the negative payoff when something goes wrong can be dead taxpayers. That's why they're parked in proper facilities. Or should be, unless some wanker doesn't measure the place before they order the truck.

Everyone's forgotten the all powerful ISO.

Step 1: Park it outside
Step 2: Get an ISO review
Step 3: Watch insurance company profits soar when they don't count the truck and everyone's homeowner rates rise.

okiefarmer: I am a Volunteer fireman here in Oklahoma and our little department got a grant from Homeland Security for a shiny new Pumper/Tanker. We sent the measurements for our $220,000 truck and 6 months later when we tried to back it in--no deal. It was 6 inches too tall. Had to make a 10 ft tall door 11 feet tall. Truck like they are talking about costs considerably more, so you really want to leave a half million dollar vehicle parked on the street?

No, I want everyone fired for needlessly wasting taxpayer dollars.

Governments -- is there nothing they can't do... Right!!!

They are called fire ENGINES, not fire TRUCKS.

All firefighters are doing a collective face palm.