Fun Day at Training Today
At the fire station, I've been spending the past couple weeks in Pump Training. This is where you learn how to operate the fire engines. So today was a practical day, where we take out the engines and go play. We were learning how to draft, which is basically pulling water from a static source (dump tanks, ponds, pools, etc).
We had the tanker and the reserve engine. A couple weeks ago, someone had driven the engine through a bay door that wasn' t up all the way, severely damaging the deck gun (highest part of our engines). Now, the pump operator is supposed to know his or her apparatus like the back of their hand. So we should all know that we have no deck gun. We had hooked up a poor man's deck gun on the side discharge, so we could flow water.
Just a bit of background information....deck guns flow a lot of water. In excess of 500 gallons per minute. The nozzles we use will flow anywhere from 600-1000+ gallons per minute. Water weighs roughly 8lbs per gallon. So we're flowing anywhere from 4800 lbs to 8000 lbs of water every minute (thats roughly 2.5-4 tons of water).
So, one of the guys is at the pump panel, operating the pump. All the sudden the Battalion Chief, who is doing the training gets a really big grin on his face. Turns to the guy at the pump, and tells him to open up the deck gun. Then the Chief takes a few steps and stand underneath one of the panels. So, the guy at the pump fiddles around a little bit, and finally manages to pull the deck gun discharge (the "deck gun" is actually on discharge #3).
So, roughly 800 gallons per minute starts shooting out the top of the engine, like a big geyser. We're all trying to keep from rolling on the ground, laughing hysterically. Meanwhile the guy at the pump totally doesn't realize why he's getting all wet, LOL. He finally figures it out, and shuts down the deck gun. Poor guy, we teased him all day about it. Heee. It took him a good 10 minutes to figure out what was wrong. Set the tone for the whole day ::cackles::.
~V
We had the tanker and the reserve engine. A couple weeks ago, someone had driven the engine through a bay door that wasn' t up all the way, severely damaging the deck gun (highest part of our engines). Now, the pump operator is supposed to know his or her apparatus like the back of their hand. So we should all know that we have no deck gun. We had hooked up a poor man's deck gun on the side discharge, so we could flow water.
Just a bit of background information....deck guns flow a lot of water. In excess of 500 gallons per minute. The nozzles we use will flow anywhere from 600-1000+ gallons per minute. Water weighs roughly 8lbs per gallon. So we're flowing anywhere from 4800 lbs to 8000 lbs of water every minute (thats roughly 2.5-4 tons of water).
So, one of the guys is at the pump panel, operating the pump. All the sudden the Battalion Chief, who is doing the training gets a really big grin on his face. Turns to the guy at the pump, and tells him to open up the deck gun. Then the Chief takes a few steps and stand underneath one of the panels. So, the guy at the pump fiddles around a little bit, and finally manages to pull the deck gun discharge (the "deck gun" is actually on discharge #3).
So, roughly 800 gallons per minute starts shooting out the top of the engine, like a big geyser. We're all trying to keep from rolling on the ground, laughing hysterically. Meanwhile the guy at the pump totally doesn't realize why he's getting all wet, LOL. He finally figures it out, and shuts down the deck gun. Poor guy, we teased him all day about it. Heee. It took him a good 10 minutes to figure out what was wrong. Set the tone for the whole day ::cackles::.
~V