Post by chief322 on Feb 28, 2008 6:56:04 GMT -5
It seems today's new buzzword is multi-tasking. It is a common phrase and practice in corporate America. Now it has made its way into the mainstream fire service. With the dollar pool continuing to dry up and labor shrinking, the fire service has trended to the use of dual or multiple service units (our brand of multi-tasking) to adeqately meet our goals.
We are seeing nifty names to our once bread and butter apparatus. The words engine, truck, rescue and tanker have been replaced with quint, rescue-engine, pumper-tanker.
The basic of basic, regardless of era, has been the engine. Some call it a pumper, others call it a wagon, but it still basically takes water in and put water out. Simple ideaology.
Over the years and era's, we have adapted our engines to perform services in both the suburban and rual areas. Departments have set these units up to work the area in which the apparatus would normally operate. Discharge and intake rates were plumbed according to the need of the area. Tank capacities were determined upon the time it took to secure a water source. Then we as a service evolved the engine into a specific function. We would set the rig, from its basic sense, to perform primarily attack capabilities or supply capabilities. This was the dawn of the engine/wagon concept in the modern age.
Now with both limited dollars and manpower available on a consistant basis, we have taken our basic engine and transformed it. Some are now overloaded trying to perform multiple functions. Are we asking to much of basic unit? Usually when multi-tasking happens, something suffers. Now instead of giving 100%, the unit must split its "time". Is it going to be primarily a truck, rescue or tanker, with the pumper being secondary? Will the needed associated equipment be distributed evenly amongst functions, or laddened towards the primary objective?
Multi-tasking our units now has become the trend. Its here, so lets accept it and move forward. But in the end, lets not forget the basics. Never forget what got us started.
Tim
We are seeing nifty names to our once bread and butter apparatus. The words engine, truck, rescue and tanker have been replaced with quint, rescue-engine, pumper-tanker.
The basic of basic, regardless of era, has been the engine. Some call it a pumper, others call it a wagon, but it still basically takes water in and put water out. Simple ideaology.
Over the years and era's, we have adapted our engines to perform services in both the suburban and rual areas. Departments have set these units up to work the area in which the apparatus would normally operate. Discharge and intake rates were plumbed according to the need of the area. Tank capacities were determined upon the time it took to secure a water source. Then we as a service evolved the engine into a specific function. We would set the rig, from its basic sense, to perform primarily attack capabilities or supply capabilities. This was the dawn of the engine/wagon concept in the modern age.
Now with both limited dollars and manpower available on a consistant basis, we have taken our basic engine and transformed it. Some are now overloaded trying to perform multiple functions. Are we asking to much of basic unit? Usually when multi-tasking happens, something suffers. Now instead of giving 100%, the unit must split its "time". Is it going to be primarily a truck, rescue or tanker, with the pumper being secondary? Will the needed associated equipment be distributed evenly amongst functions, or laddened towards the primary objective?
Multi-tasking our units now has become the trend. Its here, so lets accept it and move forward. But in the end, lets not forget the basics. Never forget what got us started.
Tim