Well i have arrived in the USA! i had a terrible flight 14 hours in a packed plane with broken air con and no movies cause that was broken too! i arrived at LA and proceeded to look for station 51 but after asking a policeman he told me it had been moved inside the restriced area and the chances of getting in there were not very good! so i moved to plan B and decided to go for a walk to station 95 as i was told it was only a quarter mile up the road.
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I walked for 2 miles and finally found it. it was a small looking station but after i got in i found it was deceptivly big houseing 1 engine (pumper), i hazmat truck, and one very very large ladder platform truck. i was very impressed with thier equipment and they refer to the ladder as the tool box with wheels it has everything you could ever need for anything then some. It has 100ft of ladder and a further 260 ft of ladders stored in the truck. Every ladder on the trucks with the exeption of the main ladder on the platform is hand made from wood and are each amazingly cared for.
The engine(pumper) was stunning with standard handlines of 1 1/2 inch, 2 inch, and 2 1/2 inches with thier main hydrant supply line at 8 inches! they can pump 8000 gallons per min if needed at 800 psi! all trucks have BA in the seat using msi backplates and 45 min cylinders with the option of 120 min cylinders for highrise or extended search and rescue. they do things a little different from us tending to focus on ventilation first then when the smoke clears and the flames are drawn to the ventilation they send in crews to knock it down. i was shown a video of them doing this and it was amazing and fires could be knocked down incredibly fast. the only draw back is they reqiered 4 crews to do it properly otherwise it just burns the house down faster! well i'll post some pics and give another report soon as i visit granite falls fire dept.
Author: Craig Davey