EMERGENCY VEHICLE OPERATIONS Friday, June 19, 2009  - In recent years there has been an escalation of responding fire apparatus crashing into each other and in the past few weeks it has even gotten worse. In this column we have always tried to be honest and fair taking on the hardest issues. This column is no different as we uncover the little understood and rarely talked about phenomenon of fire apparatus racing each other into an alarm location.             First the incidents Tuesday April 27, 2004 two pumpers responding to a working shed fire, from different stations and different departments collided at an intersection controlled by a pre-emption system, in Melrose Park, Illinois. This incident resulted in one line of duty death and several serious injuries.             In Waterbury Connecticut on May 19, 2007 a responding pumper and ladder collided at an intersection. According to police reports the officer and the driver of the pumper did not have seat belts on and were ejected. The officer succumbed to his injuries several days after the initial crash. Six other firefighters were transported with non-life threatening injuries.             In St. Louis, Missouri Oct. 2008, two St. Louis quints collided at an intersection responding to a fire. The incident was actually caught on a security video camera. Several firefighters were hurt.             In Manhattan, New York, November 2008 an F.D.N.Y. Squad and a tower ladder collided responding to an odor of gas. The Squad officer was seriously injured.             In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Thursday March 19, 2009 a tractor drawn aerial ladder and a squirt collided in Center City section of Philly. Nine firefighters were hurt including one firefighter that was trapped in the apparatus for fifteen minutes.             Finally in Houston, Texas on Monday March 30, 2009 an engine company and a ladder company responding to what turned out to be a good intent call for sewage smoke created by the public works department, collided at an intersection controlled with a pre-emption system. The colliding apparatus took down a utility pole and the ladder truck then flipped onto a car and struck a bicycle. The driver of the car was seriously injured and the bicyclist was critically injured and is hanging on as of this writing. One of the firefighters was badly hurt when he was ejected out of the apparatus. The pumper struck the ladder truck in the rear. No skid marks were found at the scene. The pumper was about a year old and the ladder was less than six months old. It has been determined by the Houston Police that the driver of the ladder truck ran the red light and will be cited for “not using due caution”. It appears that the pre-emption system was working properly at the time of the incident.             The Houston press started a dialogue about the long standing tradition of fire companies racing to beat each other to the scene of fires or emergencies. Doing some research from my own department it was a practice that started in the late eighteen hundreds when volunteer firefighters would race to the scene of fires with the first responding unit to get water on the fire would get a monetary award from the insurance industry. Since that time it has become tradition for firefighters wanting to protect their citizens in their first due response areas to get to the scene before other responding units. It has become a matter of department pride and company pride to arrive first and render aid. Obviously with the replacement of horse drawn apparatus with motorized apparatus capable of 500 horse power, with radio’s and computers and intersections equipped with pre-emption systems much has changed in a standard fire department response over the course of the last one hundred years. Getting to the scene of a fire or an emergency quickly and safely is admirable, however when we injure and kill civilians and firefighters in the process that is unacceptable. Everyone in the fire service that has ever driven or ridden in a 30 ton fire truck responding to the scene of a fire or emergency knows what an awesome responsibility that is and how difficult it can be. However every fire department response needs to be a controlled response with a quick response needed to be balanced with a safe response. Who is responsible for this quick yet safe response? It starts at the top with chief officers are there written policies that are ENFORCED to control the response i.e. stopping at all red lights and stop signs. Do your chief officers wear seatbelts when they respond and act as mentors to all of the firefighters in there command.  Company officers and Apparatus operators have a shared responsibility to make sure that the apparatus, equipment and firefighters arrive on scene safely. Unfortunately I have experienced both sides of an unsafe response where the operator was not holding up his end of the bargain and the company officer was yelling at the operator to go faster or the second due is going to beat us in. What I find really disconcerting in two of the incidents listed the intersections were controlled by a preemption system. If the intersection is controlled by preemption and the light is red you must stop more than ever why? Because another responding apparatus has grabbed the signal from another direction before your apparatus did.             No firefighter or company officer wants to be involved in an incident like any mentioned here that is why it is so important for the company officer and the apparatus operator to work together to achieve a quick yet safe response.   Firehouse May 2009 By Michael Wilbur