| Well it was that time of year again for hose testing and as in the past few years we have contracted this labor intensive job out to commercial companies who specialize in this kind of work. This year the contract was awarded to The Fail Safe Company of New Jersey. These fellows came ready for work with about 10 employees and several pieces of equipment to get the job done. They had a unique trailer setup that had a large manifold system built right into the trailer. This allowed them to check many sections of hose at one time.
Bay District Volunteer Fire Department tests there hose once a year as required by the Insurance Service Office (ISO) in order for us and the members of our community to qualify for lower fire insurance rates than other communities. Our department currently is rated as a class 4 fire department which is very good considering we are an all volunteer fire department. Class 1 is the best you can be and that requires having paid personnel along with many other items. Bay District will continue to work towards that class rating in the future and as we continue to grow as a community we can see that happening.
Some may ask why we hire someone to do this job, well let me tell you a little about what it used to take our members to get it done. We would take our drill night which is Monday night and take one piece up to the Laurel Glenn shopping center where in the rear of the stores we would lay out all the hose and I mean all of it. We have 5 pieces of equipment that carry hose and a total of about 19,000 feet of hose total. After the men and women tested the hose it then had to be taken apart, drained of water and reloaded back on the fire truck. This took us about 3 hours of back breaking work to get it done and with 5 fire trucks it took us over a month before it was all tested. Trust me there is no glory in testing hose and as the weeks went by our people just got tired of it plus the officers of the department felt we were missing out on valuable time that could be spent training for fighting fires and learning the tools that are used on auto accidents. The board of directors of the department then decided to put this job out for bids and when the prices came back we were surprised at how cheap these companies could do it for and in a shorter period of time.
Now let me tell you these guys came down from New Jersey the night before and they were on the job at dawn and working till after dark to get the job done in two days. It is money well spent and if you don't believe that then just as any of our firefighters what they think about it.
In the process of testing the hose we had several pieces break while being tested and that's the place you want it to break not on a fire. |
