KidVision's Real Wheels: There Goes a Fire Truck

Kids love playing with

fire

truck

s, but have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a

real

fire

fighter? so you and me are going to find out what it takes to be a firefighter and all about the great gear they wear so what do you say? We checked, most firefighters live in the firehouse when they're on duty when they're not putting out fires they have chores to do just like the rest of us well you were asking me what it's like to be a firefighter firefighter dave well i'll tell you what it's like its probably the best job in the world i have had multiple jobs and i have been with a fire service for about 15 years and i

real

ly enjoy it we work 24 hour shifts there are eight of us on our station therefore we have to get along this is my second family i have a family back home and i have a family in the fire service our actual work day starts at eight o'clock we start doing what we call station and equipment maintenance every day we are responsible for maintaining the crew maintaining the station mopping the floors cleaning the bathrooms washing the fire

truck

s making sure the whole crew is ready because when you call 9-1-1 and we're not ready the whole system falls apart fire department emergency what's the problem ma'am and her address is in a house or an apartment and your name and what is your phone number agatha it's ok get everyone out of the house and we'll send the fire department ok 131 135 truck 131 structure fire 500 david when a fire arrives emergency call firefighters have to be ready for action and if you are not ready you will be left behind.

Well it looks like fireman dave missed the fire truck. I'll have to try to be faster next time. Firefighters also need to be specially equipped with the clothing they wear 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 they have to wear well firefighter dave let's start with the bottom of the outfit and we'll work our way up, okay? You notice that the boots you are wearing are steel-toed rubber boots, they are to protect the feet of the firefighter. You walk into a burning building many times.

There may be nails, glass, or something of that nature, so it helps protect your feet from sharp objects. objects and also your toes are steel in case something falls on you now the pants and jacket you wear are made of a material called nomex now this is a fire retardant material that helps reduce flame or heat in the uniform now you also wear your helmet it's a hard plastic that helps protect your head in case things fall out of the sky that kind of thing one thing you have to remember when you're inside a building in a fire even though we have all this good gear is kind of a false sense of security, you walk into a burning building, the temperature can get really, really hot, sometimes 1200 degrees, with all this protective clothing on, you're not going to really feel all that heat, that's why they work firefighters. in what we call the buddy system we go into a building together we protect each other if i see you're getting in trouble or maybe you're getting too close to the fire i can tap your shoulder and say come on fireman dave let's get out it's getting too dangerous , that's why we use the protective clothing that you have in the helmet, the pants, the coat, the boots and also our gloves help us do our job a little better.

Fire! I bet that oops! I guess I forgot to close the valve. I guess you'd like to see that again. Well, I guess being a firefighter isn't as easy as I thought. the real firefighters these big legs are pulled out one by one to stabilize the fire truck so the big ladder can be lifted into the air once the support legs are in place they prevent the truck from tipping over firefighters get ready To lift the grand ladder the operator must make sure there are no dangerous power lines getting in the way the grand ladder and basket can go up a hundred feet in the air a fire truck is a really complicated machine but in the cab it is Much like a normal truck except there are lots of buttons and switches.

I asked one of the actual firefighters to show me how they work. A fire truck works pretty much the same as normal truck units. What are some of those buttons doing today? Up here we have buttons like on your normal truck for the lights, the headlights and the marker lights and stuff, but we also have a switch here that turns all the red lights on at the same time. I can turn those lights off individually if I want to but one switch will turn them all on at the same time when I turn that switch on and then down here on the floor we have some buttons that if I press with my foot they will activate the siren and sound the siren and then here is another one for the air horn and then we have one more thing up here it's another type of siren so we have two and this siren is the electronic siren and we can turn it on by just pulling the switch up here okay if you listen closely you probably notice the trucks Firefighters have different types of sirens and they come from different places on the fire truck.

This machine has three different sirens. This right here is the mechanical siren. That's the main mermaid than you. i hear most of the time so right here this is an electronic siren it sounds more like an ambulance siren they use than occasionally too now these are the air horns these are the big horns that lurk to warn cars to pull over this is a fire truck and this is used to pump water however we carry a couple of ladders and that's how we storm and where we keep them this is where the firefighter sits and that's uh where he rides his way to the fire and in In this compartment we carry our jug ​​of water and that is so that when we are fighting a fire we can dehydrate a bit we can drink some water and we carry fuses and various tools and things in that compartment and then here we have our thing call the fire pump panel our engineer and this is where all the meters and valves are and things that we can make the water divert the water from one flush to another or open another valve to allow the water to go from the hydrant to the pump here we carry extra water air bottles and these are the same bottles that we use in our breathing apparatus back here we have the motor that drives this motor makes it work and makes the pump work we also have the hose we have our four inch hose and there is plenty of hose here on this bed of hose to go from here about five blocks down the street and on that side we have a two and a half inch hose and there's enough hose there to run 12 football fields long and we use that hose to connect 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 large 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 it can tearing down walls in these compartments here we keep our first aid supplies and use them because we go out with a lot of people who have been hurt or are sick and this is basically what we have to take care of them one of the most dangerous jobs of being a firefighter is working in the bomb squad this is the vehicle that pulls the trailer that has the container that holds the bomb now this is where they put the bomb if they think it might explode this container is very very thick as you can see and it's v shaped so that if the bomb explodes, it explodes in the air, not to the sides, where it can injure people or vehicles. the clothes the bomb squad wears are really interesting, what do you say?

Let's take a look at that now this is what we call a self containment suit or a bomb suit when the bomb technician

goes

up to work on a suspected bomb 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 really hard here this protects his legs it comes up and they're like overalls this protects his body in case the bomb

goes

off now he wears a jacket that goes over this and what we'll do now we'll put on the jacket now this is very very heavy it's okay and as you can see it completely protects you when you have this on let me step right under here go ahead put your helmet on and you're ready to work on a device.

You are fully protected in case something happens. He looks like a spaceman. Fire boats are also used to fight some fires. of the equipment you see behind me is a fire truck its main function is to transport men and heavy equipment to the scene of the fire it does not carry water it does not carry a hose all the equipment it carries is used primarily for forced entry for salvage and overhaul operations we are now we'll zoom in a little bit closer we'll take a closer look we'll start by taking a look at the cockpit this is where the captain and engineer right in the fire apparatus the engineer is the person who drives and operates the unit the captain of course is in charge of the crew on this particular team we have four men captain and engineer and two firefighters now the firefighters come back up in this area this is known as a booster seat as you can see they ride front to back when we get a call, the firefighter gets in the unit, he's putting on his coat, pants, his other gear and he's also putting on his breathing apparatus that way, when we get to the scene of the fire, he's ready to go Get to work just step off the unit and you're ready to go into this particular compartment as you can see we have what appears to be a large fan which is exactly what it is it's a gasoline powered smoke ejector as we enter in a building that is full of smoke we have to get the smoke out for the firefighter to get in and put out the fire we do it using these big fans we carry two of these in the unit this is the compartment that contains the levers that operate our outriggers and that we can raise and go down the ladder behind this sheet this is where we keep all our ladders all the ladders you can see it just on the buttons we have all our ladders 16 20 feet the big 40 footer on this side we have another 16, another 20, and 35 feet also in this compartment and they're a little hard to see but if you look really closely here we have what we call pike poles long poles with a hook on the end we use those poles to take down roofs inside a building if we need to climb to the attic area okay now I'm in the unit basket as we told you earlier this is going to go up 100 feet in the air you see this big red thing here's a nozzle.

There is basically no difference between this nozzle and the nozzle you have at home on your garden hose. The only difference is that this mouthpiece is slightly larger. It works on the same principle. We can flow full gallon, thousand gallons per minute. this nozzle and all you have to do to operate it is just turn it like this and you'll get a broad pattern or you can get a very sharp defined pattern by turning this wheel we can turn it left to right loosening it as you can see up and down this piece of equipment it is mainly used for large fires large buildings where we need to rise above the fire shoot water on them to literally drown the fire another important piece of equipment used for fire fighting is the helicopter it helps with rescues moving equipment and can also transport small amounts of water now that it is big there are many different types of firefighting vehicles this is an airport fire truck and as you can see not all firefighting vehicles come in red color this is one of the airport fire trucks The largest fire trucks it's yellow costs almost half a million dollars and it's for fighting some very special types of fires hi I'm mike strauss I'm with the ontario airport fire department and today you're looking at one of the largest trucks in the fire service today this particular vehicle is specifically designed to fight airport fires, which means if there's a plane crash, we'll go ahead and roll over and take this truck out and pour water on it specifically designed to fight airport fires and What we have here at the front are what we call two turrets and what they do is just spew water from here and here and the top one spews water at a rate of about 1,200 gallons per minute and that's about 15 to 20 full tubs of water per minute and the bottom one is squirting out at a little bit lower rate of about 500 gallons per minute and what is also coming out of the water is what we call foam as if you take like a bubble bath that has like foam on the water and that's what comes out of this too ok now we are inside the cabin and we use these headphones to be able to communicate with the tower that tells us if a plane is coming our way or not and to communicate with other firefighters and others fire trucks and inside the cab we control most of our firefighting sowe call joysticks and they are like a basic video game in your videos in your video stores or whatever and you can control most of the firefighting turrets that I showed you earlier by moving the joystick back and forth and it will spew water at any direction you turn it and everything here is basically like driving a normal car you have your gas pedal and you have your brake pedal and then you have your gear stick steering wheel and horn different types of firefighters wear different types of protective gear as you can see i have a yellow coat on and you here at the airport wear silver coats, right?

Basically they are designed for the same thing to protect themselves when they go into a fire. The reason they are aluminized is to reflect heat a bit more. than standard nomex firefighting and they're a little bit heavier they're aluminized suits so they're a little bit heavier and can hold a little bit more heat they reflect a little bit more heat because in a fire when it burns it burns close to 2000 degrees the fuel itself allows us a little bit more time to be able to fight the fire very closely and what we have here is basically the same with pants and everyone has the normal firefighter boots and well , here's a question for you, dave, do you know why firefighters have red suspenders? your work there we go that will be acceptable ontario medication 131 will set up command in a three story industrial building we have smoke and flame showing all units code three this is a condition b fire my command post will be located in front of the building towards truck 131 from the west, go inside and take the utilities and ventilation.

We are laying the line. Experienced firefighters must also maintain their skills. Outside of practice, fires are dangerous business, so a headline statement, uh, we can make kids not play with matches. Fire is our friend, but it is also our enemy. in the hands of adults if you have a fire in your house leave your house you saw how quickly this fire built up and intensified if you are a civilian inside a house we went in wearing protective clothing protective breathing apparatus you can see the temperatures i have melted the fire shield my helmet so that's the kind of temperature without this protective clothing you would die almost immediately get out of the house see a neighbor call the fire department from a neighbor's house call 9-1-1 at most areas tell them the location of the fire do not hang up until a dispatcher tells you to give us the description the type of call the type of fire you have and if you can, upon our arrival let us know if everyone is out of the home you can have a place meeting place where all family members can come together say at the end of a driveway on the sidewalk something of that effect help us then we know if the father and mother are there saying I have all my kids outside we know it's just a structure fire with no lives threatened our firefighters don't have to take undue risk we don't want to hurt the firefighters we don't want to lose civilians oh hi unless i'm a little embarrassed this uh firefighting The thing didn't really work out as the firefighter had planned Dave, even though I was just pretending, but they put me to work and told me if I do really well at this, I can polish the truck tomorrow and remember, kids, fire is serious. business don't play with fire you