Photos from Tim Olk at the 5-11 Alarm fire in Chicago, 11-5-16
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
Tim Olk photo
5-11 Alarm fire in Chicago, 11-5-16 (more)
#1 by Bill Post on November 8, 2016 - 12:43 AM
Mike L , I agree with you about the safety issue on the Aerial Ladder and normally lanyards are used to direct the stream from the ground. New York City also uses lanyards when they use ladder pipes. However believe it or not there some major fire departments that still normally have a man perched on the end of extended aerial ladders manually operating a ladder pipe. The fire departments that use that technique usually will have two foldable steps usually parallel to the upper rungs of the top section of the aerial ladder so the “pipeman” has a more secure footing. The Los Angeles City Fire Department still uses that technique very frequently as the Los Angeles City fire department (believe it or not) doesn’t use any Aerial Platforms and has never owned a Tower Ladder. While Los Angeles did at one time own a few Snorkels they never really used them for very long.They did have two 85 foot Snorkels that were in service from approximately 1968 until 1970 and were taken out of service when one of them flipped over while it was extended and a fire fighter was killed. Later it was found that the cause of the accident was an outrigger that wasn’t fully extended, however they already had taken the large Snorkel out of service and were getting rid of them. The Los Angeles City fire department was still using 4 , 50 foot Snorkels that were built on to a Pumper Chassis and were part of their Heavy Duty Task Forces that were stationed Downtown and near Hollywood. Most of them were taken out of service in 1978 when all of the Heavy Duty Task Forces were downgraded to conventional Task Forces.
I’ve seen a number of photos of extra alarm fires in Los Angeles with men perched on the top of the Aerial Ladders operating the Ladder Pipes. The same is also true for the San Francisco fire department.
#2 by Mike L on November 7, 2016 - 1:13 PM
Mike, I was thinking the same thing. I know that people are bent about the blue lights and red roofs (rightfully so from a tradition standpoint) but now they have gone backwards tactically. Fog nozzle on a master stream is about as useless as it gets. Also, a safety issue was the guy on Trk 32’s ladder during ladder pipe ops. WTF? They have the halyards for that. It may have been he was up there to adjust something and came right down but the series of pics made it look like he was up there for a while.
Fallen idols. LOL!
#3 by Marty Coyne on November 7, 2016 - 2:01 PM
Which is really odd because when TL39 went into service it had the stacked tip not the fog nozzle. I wonder when and why they changed it back to the fog.
#4 by Crabby Milton on November 7, 2016 - 12:31 PM
I like how that rainbow was captured
#5 by Mike on November 6, 2016 - 11:48 AM
That’s an oddity in the first picture. The tower with a fog nozzle instead of the stacked tip straight stream.