Doors Open Day:Fire Station
Mar. 5th, 2012 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xenithThe Launceston Fire Station on a lovely, bleak rainy day. I have better photos. I should find one.
I was just going to put up the photos, because repeating what we were told seems rude, but then the photos look bare by themselves so I'll a few bits as I remember them.
As it says at the top, this building was constructed in 1938. About twenty years later it was "modernised" and the façade covered over. It was reinstated fairly recently because people still talking about*.
Prior to the that, the station was in Brisbane St, apparently on a site that adjoins the current site**.
We started out the front here with Ben and Paul (I think, the acoustics weren't good) talking about this truck, which is the one they send out for most incidents. They were telling us about the hoses, and how the one at the bottom is heavy so they prefer to use the one top one that he's holding, when there was a call over the PA and Paul and the truck left.
So we were taken over to this truck, which they use for road accidents and similar incidents (like a kid getting his head caught in bars), and they indicated all the bits like the big light on top and the portable lights and the stabilisers and some other stuff.
Then around the back to show off more stuff (the back door lifts up).
Then much talking about cutting people out of cars with the spreaders, and they go out to the Youngtown site and practice on cars out there and a bus, but newer cars are different and they don't get many (any?) to practice on.
Around the side, the industrial-scale spreaders.
Upstairs, with the windows overlooking Paterson St. There are also bedrooms out the back, and a mess. They work two days of 10 hours, followed by two nights of 14 hours, then four days off.
The pool table, he says, is over a hundred years old (so from the previous building) and when they laid the carpet in here, they laid it around the table without moving it.
Two sets of gear. The righthand gear for housefires and similar (and it can withstand a flash of xxx degress for 17 seconds, I cannot remember the numbers though). The trousers/boots combo I assume they just step into and pull them up. They aim to get dressed and into the trucks 90 seconds after they get a call. The yellow gear is for wildfires. It's easier to move in.
Out the back. The righthand truck was a "spare" and the left two are the bushfire vehicles. It seems they manufacture their own vehicles, down at Cambridge.
At the top of the windows, there are foil "blinds" to pull down to provide some protection from fires.
Buildings at the back. I think the lefthand one was the gym, the other for storage.
This doesn't have its own pump, they have to connect another truck to it.
And that's it. The lights are flashing on the front of the truck, but they don't show.
*Not that I can find a photo of it with the facade, either online or at the museum. I can't even remember what it looked like.
** A new tower and station were built in the 1880s, but whether they are the same building (being the firebell tower) or at different locations, I don't know. We couldn't find a photo of the previous building/s either except for one taken in 1934 that is so close in it's not possible to tell where it is. That might even have been on the site of the current building. There are places to look for more information, but we don't care that much.
I was just going to put up the photos, because repeating what we were told seems rude, but then the photos look bare by themselves so I'll a few bits as I remember them.
As it says at the top, this building was constructed in 1938. About twenty years later it was "modernised" and the façade covered over. It was reinstated fairly recently because people still talking about*.
Prior to the that, the station was in Brisbane St, apparently on a site that adjoins the current site**.
We started out the front here with Ben and Paul (I think, the acoustics weren't good) talking about this truck, which is the one they send out for most incidents. They were telling us about the hoses, and how the one at the bottom is heavy so they prefer to use the one top one that he's holding, when there was a call over the PA and Paul and the truck left.
So we were taken over to this truck, which they use for road accidents and similar incidents (like a kid getting his head caught in bars), and they indicated all the bits like the big light on top and the portable lights and the stabilisers and some other stuff.
Then around the back to show off more stuff (the back door lifts up).
Then much talking about cutting people out of cars with the spreaders, and they go out to the Youngtown site and practice on cars out there and a bus, but newer cars are different and they don't get many (any?) to practice on.
Around the side, the industrial-scale spreaders.
Upstairs, with the windows overlooking Paterson St. There are also bedrooms out the back, and a mess. They work two days of 10 hours, followed by two nights of 14 hours, then four days off.
The pool table, he says, is over a hundred years old (so from the previous building) and when they laid the carpet in here, they laid it around the table without moving it.
Two sets of gear. The righthand gear for housefires and similar (and it can withstand a flash of xxx degress for 17 seconds, I cannot remember the numbers though). The trousers/boots combo I assume they just step into and pull them up. They aim to get dressed and into the trucks 90 seconds after they get a call. The yellow gear is for wildfires. It's easier to move in.
Out the back. The righthand truck was a "spare" and the left two are the bushfire vehicles. It seems they manufacture their own vehicles, down at Cambridge.
At the top of the windows, there are foil "blinds" to pull down to provide some protection from fires.
Buildings at the back. I think the lefthand one was the gym, the other for storage.
This doesn't have its own pump, they have to connect another truck to it.
And that's it. The lights are flashing on the front of the truck, but they don't show.
*Not that I can find a photo of it with the facade, either online or at the museum. I can't even remember what it looked like.
** A new tower and station were built in the 1880s, but whether they are the same building (being the firebell tower) or at different locations, I don't know. We couldn't find a photo of the previous building/s either except for one taken in 1934 that is so close in it's not possible to tell where it is. That might even have been on the site of the current building. There are places to look for more information, but we don't care that much.
