After I made two videos concerning American / German ambulances and police cars, there were many requests that I should make also a video "American VS German fire trucks" ... the problem which I also mentioned in the answers: while I was lucky to have ambulances from several areas in the USA and also had videos from numerous different law enforcement authorities, all I have concerning American fire trucks are apparatus from the FDNY. The FDNY for sure is very iconic, it can't really stand up for the variety of fire trucks across the USA. That's why I didn't name the video "American fire trucks ...", so please don't hate the video, I'm aware of that there many other, great looking and awesome apparatus and colour schemes in the USA.
Concerning the American part you see some FDNY apparatus I was able to film during a 10 days long stay in New York City.
There are several Engines, various kind of Aerials, Battalion and Division Chiefs, Heavy Rescue Trucks, an Ambulance and some more apparatus.
Living in Germany, it's no surprise that I have a greater variety of fire apparatus from Germany. I thought about comparing the trucks from the FDNY to ones from just one German FD as well, but this wasn't really an option: the only places I have plenty videos of, are cities with the number of inhabitants raning in the few 100k range, while I only have very few videos from the cities with more than a million inhabitants. So I decided to mix fire trucks from all over Germany, from large cities to small villages, from the north to the south across the county, in service at career and volunteer fire departments and even some rental trucks from fire apparatus manufacturers.
Concerning the types of apparatus: you can see chief cars and command vans, small fire-fighting units like the Portable Pump Vans, the rather compact City-Engines to full-size Engines, Rescue Engines, Rescue Tankers, Urban Tankers and Tankers, Mini Rescue Vans, Heavy Rescue Trucks, Truck Cranes, Tower Ladders and Telescopic Platforms, Pod Carriers, Hose Truck, Logistics Truck, Ambulances and a Large Capacity Ambulance, various vans and also special operation units like a SCBA unit or a Decontamination Truck. There are also two former Tankers from German airports in the video. After their service at the airport FD they were sold to other departments or manufacturers.
Some differences between American fire apparatus and German ones: the tactics and organizations in both countries differ alot
1. While american fire departments have rather many small stations scattered in the area, usually with 1 to 4 apparatus, there are rather less but thatfor enormous stations in Germany, with easily more than 40 bays at the largest stations.
2. this results also in Germany rather going for a convoy system instead of numerous apparatus responding on their own
3. American Engines are designed more for jsut the fire-fighting part, while German ones are layed out multifunctional and perform also full-scale rescue operations and other technical tasks.
4. Concerning Aerials, the truck chassis in the USA is alot larger than in Germany. American ones tend to have a crew cab, water tank, pump, ground ladders and often also rescue tools on board, while German ones usually have just a short cab, no tank, no pump, no ground ladders and no heavy rescue tools but just some iminor amounts of equipment on board. The narrow streets in ancient city centers require as compact as possible trucks. Since they usually respond in a convoy (see No. 2) all non-existing equipment on Aerials, is brought to the scene by the Engines and Rescue Engines:_ they have further crews, rescue tools, ground ladders and also secure the water supply.
Most German Aerials are 105' Tower Ladders, there are just few smaller ones like 75', and the largest one which rolled down the streets was 367' high. There are hardly any Midmounts and hardly any Aerials without a bucket in Germany
5. Emergency lights: You primarily see white and red emergency lights in the USA, sometimes mixed also with amber, green or blue lights; In Germany all emergency lights have to be blue
6. Sirens: in the USA you hear some sort of wail or yelp siren most of the time, including special ones like e.g. the Federal Signal Q; Sometimes you also hear hi-lo sirens, and in few cases also the real German set of martin horn sirens. In Germany, wail and yelp sirens fail to meet the acustic and thus legal requirements, thus being hi-lo the only legal choice. however some fire departments made field tests with wail sirens and some old GDR apparatus still have the old wail sirens from the old days.
7. American apparatus are often built on a custom chassis, while most German apparatus are built on a commercial truck chassis
8. Although there's an enormous difference concerning the area the countries cover and their population, both the USA and Germany have the same number of fire-fighters: 1.1 million
30 янв 2017
