Fire Truck Rescue

[Looper]

We recently had to use a bunch of our rescue equipment to save one of our fire trucks.

We were leaving the scene of a call, in one of our 52 apartment complexes, when the pumper fell through the concrete slab of the parking lot. It seems that a water/sewer pipe had broken and erroded the dirt out from under the 3" thick slab. It collapsed under the left front tire and the truck ended up resting on the frame, with the front bumper less than 2" off the ground. We ended up having to lift the truck with a series of high pressure airbags and use cribbing to fill in the hole under the tire. We were able to see that the dirt had erroded out from under an area of about 10' x 20', which was directly under the rest of the truck, of course. Then we used 8' long 4x4s to make a "platform" to drive the truck across and spread the weight, until we got back to good concrete. No major damage to the truck. We were lucky it was our 40,000lbs engine and not the 75,000lbs tower.

I'd hate to think what would have happened if we had been using the aerial and the concrete collapsed under the outriggers.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

[Daryl Camp]

Not quite as severe, but about a month ago one of the Fire trucks in Cairns Qld, fell through a hole in the road where a storm water pipe had eroded the ground under the road. Only minor damage ocurred, but they had to get a large tow truck to lift the front up and out of the hole. It was not a rescue truck and the rescue truck was at another job.