01x01 - There Goes a Fire Truck

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you [Music]

kids love to play with fire trucks but have you ever wondered what it would be

like to be a real firefighter [Music]

hi kids I'm fireman Dave well I'm not really a firefighter but the real

firefighters have agreed to let me pretend for the day so you and I are gonna find out what it takes to be a

firefighter and all about all the great equipment they use so what do you say we check it out

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most firefighters live in the fire station when they're on duty when they

aren't fighting fires they have chores to do just like the rest of us

[Music] well you were asking me what it's like

to be a firefighter firefighter David I'll tell you what it's like it's probably the best job in the world I've

held a number of jobs I've been with a fire service now for about 15 years and I really enjoy it

we work 24 hour shifts there's eight of us at our station therefore we have to

get along this is my second family I have a family at home and I have a family in the fire service our actual

workday starts at 8 o'clock we start doing what we call station and equipment maintenance every day we're responsible

for maintaining the equipment maintaining the station mopping the floors cleaning out the restrooms

washing the fire trucks making sure all the equipment is ready to go because

when you call 911 not ready the whole system falls apart fire department

emergency what's the problem am in your address is that a house or an apartment

and your name and what's your phone number Agatha okay you get everybody out

of house we'll send a fire department okay [Music]

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when an emergency call comes in the firefighters have to be ready for action

and if you're not ready you'll get left behind [Music]

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well it looks like fireman day miss the fire truck I'll just have to try to be

faster next time firefighters have to be specially equipped in the clothes they

wear as well in order to stay safe when fighting fires this is firefighter cliff and he's going to tell us a little bit about the

specialized clothing that they have to wear well firefighter Dave let's start at the bottom of the outfit and we'll just work

our way up all right you notice the boots that you have on those are steel toed rubber boots those are to protect

the firefighters speed go into a burning building a lot of times there might be nails or glass or something of that

nature so it helps protect the feet by sharp objects and also the toes are

steel in case something falls on now the pants and the jacket that you're wearing

are made out of a material called Nomex now this is a flame-retardant material

it helps to reduce the flame or the heat on the uniform

now also you wear your helmet it's a hard plastic it helps to protect your

head in case of things falling from the sky that sort of thing one thing that

you have to remember when you're inside a building in a fire although we have all of this good equipment on it's kind

of a false sense of security you get into a burning building the temperature can get very very hot

sometimes 1,200 degrees with all this protective clothing on you're not gonna really feel all of that

heat that's why firefighters work on what we call the buddy system go into a building

together we protect each other if I see that you're getting in trouble or maybe

you're getting too close to the fire I can tap you on the shoulder and say come on firefighter Dave let's get out it's

getting too dangerous that's why we wear the protective clothing that you have on the helmet

pants coat boots and also our gloves helps us do our job a little better all

right I guess we're ready to go fight a fire you bet [Music]

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whoops I guess I forgot to shut off the valve I suppose you'd like to see that

again

well I guess being a firefighter is it as easy as I thought from now on fireman

Dave is going to leave the firefighting up to the real firefighters

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these big legs are put out one by one to stabilize the firetruck so the big

ladder can be put in the air

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once these support legs are in place they keep the truck from tipping over the firefighters prepare to raise the

big ladder the operator must be sure that there are no dangerous power lines

to get in the way the big ladder in basket can go a hundred feet in the air

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[Music] the firetruck is the real complicated machine but in the c*ck it's pretty

much like a regular truck except there are lots of buttons and switches ask one of the real firefighters to show me how

they work a fire truck works pretty much the same as a regular truck drives we have a lot of extra buttons to deal with

though and I'm gonna show you what some of those buttons do today up here we have buttons just like your regular

truck dust for lights and headlights and marker lights and those things but then

we also have over here at one switch that turns on all the red lights all at the same time I can turn off those

lights individually if I want but one switch will turn them on all at the same time when I turn that switch on then

down here on the floor board we have some buttons that if I push with my foot

they will activate the siren and make the siren go and then over here is another one or the air horn and then we

have one more thing up here it's another kind of siren so we have two and this siren is the electronic side and you can

turn this on just by turning a switch up here well if you listen close you've probably noticed that fire trucks have

different kinds of sirens and they come from different places on the fire truck this machine has three different sirens

this one here is the mechanical siren that's the main siren that you hear most of the time and right here this is an

electronic siren sounds more like an ambulance who's that occasionally - now these are

the air horns these are the big horns that want to warn the cars to get out of the way

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this is a fire engine and this is used for pumping water however we do carry a

couple of ladders and this is how we storm and where we keep them back here is where the firefighter sits and that's

where he rides on his way to the fire and in this compartment we carry our

water jug and that's so that when we're fighting a fire we get a little dehydrated we can have a little water

and we carry fuses and assorted tools and things in that compartment and then

here we have our what we call our engineers pump pedal and this is where all the gauges and valves and things are

that we can make water and divert water from one discharge to another or open up

another valve to let the water come from the hydrant into the pump and here we

carry extra air bottles and these are the same bottles that we wear in our

breathing apparatus back here we have

the engine that drives this this engine makes it go and makes the pump work we

also have the hulls we have our four inch hose and this there's enough hose

here in this hose bed to go from here to about five blocks down the street and on

that side we have two and a half inch hose and there's enough hose in there to go 12 football fields long and we use

that hose to hook up to a fire hydrant and then get water from the fire hydrant to where the fire is this is what we

call a monitor this is what we use on big fires because it can flow a thousand gallons of water a minute we can move it

to any side of the engine we want and it's so powerful that it can knock walls down in these compartments here we keep

our keep our first-aid supplies and we use these because we go out on a lot of people who have been hurt or are sick

and this is basically what we need to take care of them

one of the most dangerous jobs being a firefighter is to work on the b*mb squad this is the vehicle that pulls the

trailer that has the container that holds the b*mb now this is where they put the b*mb if they think it might

explode this container is very very thick as you can see and it's shaped in a V form so that if the b*mb does

explode it explodes up into the air not out to the sides where it can hurt people or vehicles

the clothing that the b*mb squad wears is really interesting what do you say we take a look at that this is what we call

a self containment suit or a b*mb suit from the b*mb technician goes up to work

on a suspected b*mb he has to have this suit on and as you can see down here

over his boots he has this part of the suit to protect his feet this is real

hard right here this particular leg comes on up and they're kind of like

coveralls this protect this body in case the b*mb should go off now he wears a

jacket that goes over this and what we'll do now we'll put the jacket on now this is very very heavy

hey and as you can see it fully protects him when he has this on let me step

right under here go ahead and put the

helmet on okay and he's all set to go work on a

device he's fully protected he say anything happens it kind of looks like a spaceman

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fire boats are also used in fighting some fires they come in all sizes and

shapes [Music]

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the piece of equipment you see behind me is required set this primary function is

to transport min and have the equipment to the fire see it carries no water it

carries no hose all of the equipment on it is used primarily for forcible entry

for salvage and for overhaul operations now we'll step a little closer take a

little closer look

we'll start off by taking a look at the camp this is where the captain in the

engineer right in the fire apparatus the engineer is the individual that drives

and operates the unit the captain of course is in charge of the crew on this

particular piece of equipment we have four men captain and engineer and two firefighters firefighters right back up

in this area this is known as a jump seat as you can see they ride facing to

the rear we get a call the firefighter gets on the unit he's putting on his

turnout coat his pants his other gear he's also putting on the breathing

apparatus that way when we give to the fire scene he's ready to go to work he

just has to step off the unit and he's ready to go in this particular compartment as you can see you've got

what looks to be a large fan which is exactly what it is this is a

gasoline-powered smoke ejector when we go into a building that's full smoke we

have to get the smoke out in order for the firefighter to come in and fight the fire we do this by using these large

fans we carry two of these on the unit

this is the compartment that contains the levers that operate our outriggers

and that we can raise and lower the ladder behind this sheet up here is

where we keep all of our ladders all the ladders you can see it just on the

bundles 16:24 the big 40-foot over on this side

we have another 16 another 20 and a 35-foot also in this compartment and

they're kind of hard to see but if you look real close back up in here we have what we call Pike poles

long poles with a hook on the end we use those poles to pull down ceilings inside

a building if we need to get up into the attic area okay I'm now up in the basket

of the unit as we told you previously this will go 100 feet in the air now you

see this big red thing here that's a nozzle there's basically no difference

between this nozzles and the nozzles you have at home on your garden hose the only difference is this nozzle just a

little bit bigger works on the same principle we can flow at maximum gallon

in 2,000 gallons a minute through this nozzle and all you have to do to operate

it is just to turn it like this and you get a wide pattern or

you can get a very sharp definite pattern by turning this wheel we can

rotate it from left or right by loosening it up as you can see up and

down this piece of equipment is used primarily for large fires large building

where we need to get up above the fire sh**t water down on it to literally drowned out fire

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another important piece of equipment used to fight fires is the helicopter it

helps with rescues in moving equipment and it can also carry small amounts of

water [Music]

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now this is a big one there are many different kinds of firefighting vehicles this is an airport fire truck and as you

can see not all firefighting vehicles come in the color red this is one of the biggest firefighting trucks it's yellow

it costs almost half a million dollars and it's for fighting some very special kinds of fires hi I'm Mike Strauss I'm

with Ontario Airport fire department in today you're looking at one of the biggest trucks in the fire service today

this particular vehicle is specifically designed to fly an airport firefighting what that means is if there's a plane

crash we'll go ahead and roll take this truck out and we'll squirt water on it's specifically designed to fight airport

fires and what we have here on the front or what we call two turrets and what

they do is they just squirt water out of them from here and here in the top when they're sports water out at a rate of

about 1,200 gallons a minute and that's about 15 to 20 bathtubs full of water a

minute and the bottom one squirts out at a little bit lower rate of about 500 gallons a minute and what up what also

comes out of the water is what we call foam like if you take like a bubble bath you have like foam sitting on top of the

water and that's what comes out of this as well okay now we're inside the cab and we

wear these headphones so we can communicate with the tower which tells it if there's a plane coming our way or not and to communicate with other

firefighters and other fire trucks and inside the cab what we control most of

our firefighting by what we call joysticks and they're just like a basic video game at your videos at your video

stores or whatever and you can control most of your firefighting the turrets that I showed you earlier but by moving

the joystick back and forth and it'll squirt water whichever way you turn it and it's everything in here is basically

just like driving a regular car you've got your gas pedal and you've got your brake pedal and you've got your

gearshift steering wheel and horn different types of firefighters use different types of protective equipment

you can see I've got a yellow coming on and you guys here at the airport where silver coats right they're basically

designed for the same thing to protect you when you go into a fire the reason

why they're there aluminized is to reflect the heat a little bit more than the standard Nomex firefighting and

they're a little bit heavier they're aluminized suits so they're a little happy and they're able to retain a

little more heat reflect a little more heat because they had a fire when it burns it burns close to 2,000 degrees

the the fuel itself so it enables us a little more time to be able to fight the fire real close at hand and when we have

down here are just basically the same thing with pants and everybody has the regular fireman boots and well here's a

question for you Dave do you know why a firemen have red suspenders hold up there's pants

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at this trimming facility future firefighters are learning the skills

that they will need to properly and safely do their job

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bollocks and fly flag going all the toys

you thing that's nice too much there we go

I tell you I'm gonna get you 131 will be establishing command and a three-story industrial building we have smoke and

flame showing all units code three is a condition B fire my command post be

located in front of the building to the west cut 131 please come and take utilities and ventilation remain alive

experienced firefighters have to keep up their skills as well this is a practice facility where they start the fires

themselves and then practice by putting them out even putting out practice fires

is dangerous business [Music]

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[Music] primary statement we can make the kids

don't play with matches fire is our friend but it's also our enemy you don't want to mess with fire in any way shape

or form lighters matches leave those in the hands of adults if you have a fire in your home leave your house you saw

how rapidly this fire built up and intensified if you're a civilian inside of home we went in with protective

clothing protective breathing apparatus you can see the temperatures I'd melted the shield on my helmet so that's the kind of temperature without these

protective clothing you would die almost right away get out of the house go to a neighbor call the fire department from a

neighbor's house call 9-1-1 in most areas it buys him though the location of the fire do not hang up the phone until

instructed to do so by a dispatcher give us the description the type of call that's a type of fire that you have and

if you can on our arrival let us know if everyone's outside of the home you can have a meeting place where all the

family members can meet say at the end of a driveway on the sidewalks in a bad effect that helps us then we know if the

father and mother are there saying I've got all my kids outside we know it's just a structure fire with no lives threatened our firefighters don't have

to take undue risks we don't want to hurt firefighters we don't wanna lose civilians Oh didn't really work out the

way fireman David plan even though I was just pretending but they put me to work and they tell me if I do real well at

this I can polish the truck tomorrow and remember kids fire is serious business

don't play with fire

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