DriveSmartBC - Driving Over Fire Hoses
 

Imagine that you are a firefighter, hose in hand, approaching the flames inside a burning building. You open the nozzle on your attack line and...nothing. Someone has driven over the hose outside in the street and ruptured it causing a loss of pressure. Not only are you unable to fight the fire, you are at risk now too.

This imaginary driver is guilty of two traffic offences. The obvious one is driving over an unprotected fire hose without the permission of the fire department official in command. What you may not be aware of is that you are prohibited from driving or parking within 150 meters of fire apparatus that has stopped in answer to a fire alarm. This is also the minimum mandatory following distance that you must maintain from a fire vehicle answering an alarm.

During the initial attack at a fire scene, firefighters are focused on saving life and property. They do not have the time or the manpower to guide drivers over the fire hoses nor to watch out for you as you drive through their scene. The law makes it simple for drivers in these cases, don't go there, period.

These rules are aimed at insuring the safety of emergency crews and require you to either wait until police arrive for traffic direction or to find another way around the scene of the fire or fire alarm.

Reference Links

As rare as this charge is, I remember actually seeing a conviction for this on a guy's driving history when running it before his court date. FYI...he lost his trial against my VT as well. The JP remarked on the fire hose conviction when I presented his history on conviction.

who would be stupid enough to even try driving over a fire hose? i will go around a street if there is a hose on it.. more for courtesy to the firemen than anything else.... they are fighting a fire, last thing they need is my sorry ass bumbling on the scene

It happens more often than you would guess. This column was prompted by a newspaper story out of Keremeos lately where the volunteers at a house fire had problems with people driving over their hoses.

and that's why i say that too many people don't use common sense.. just put yourself in their shoes for once and see how it feels...

The 'Stay Back 150m' is no joke!

With that being said, you can't prevent stupid people.

It wouldn't be too hard to put some hose blocking on the trucks, takes 30 secs to throw on either side of the hose: problem solved.

The firefolk could install some sort of ramp system to permit driving over a protected hose without harming it but that would mean vehicles moving thru a fire scene and something else for them to have to watch out for. Having directed traffic thru/around literally hundreds of crash scenes over the years and watched at the idiot gawkers who pay absoloutely no attention to their driving, I wouldn't want that either.

im sorry skidmark, but i find that extremely hard to believe. i use firehoses and fire hydrants as much if not more then a firefighter does. we use the exact same fire hoses they use, and i have semi trucks/cars/trucks run over the hose at all times, not once has a hose ever ruptured, those things can take a beating!


and just for sh*ts and giggles, heres a pic of a fire hydrant i was playing with today.

http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._5905177_n.jpg

I'm only repeating what my research at various fire department web sites has taught me. I took it at face value as I felt they knew more about the situation than I did. I even managed to find a video on YouTube showing a hose rupture after someone drove over it.

A firefighter discussion forum talked about water hammer caused by the vehicle driving over the hose potentially damaging the pump as well.

Not saying you're wrong of course, as clearly you have experience that I don't.

oh okay, sorry, didnt think about pumps...in that case yes lol, the water hammer can easily blow a pump. i rarely use a pump, i just hook up straight to a hydrant with a hose...but i have had pumps blow lol

with my family being involved with the fire department... when the hose is under pressure with the pump, and those lines are run across the street. those lines are pressured up WAY higher than the 100+ PSI that the normal Municipal Plumbing is set at

Just playing devil's advocate here, not excusing people doing stupid things like driving over fire hoses, but wouldn't it be a good idea for the fire crews to, I don't know, BLOCK THE STREET as soon as they arrive, before there are any hoses even laid out?

I'm just sayin'...

(This reminds me of that scene from the first episode of Third Watch, where the fire crews arrive to find an SUV parked right in front of the hydrant blocking their access to it... so they smash out the windows and run the hose THROUGH the truck to the hydrant... owner comes out later to find the thing completely full of water from the spray :))

Sometimes due to the length of the run from the hydrant and the location of the house, they have no choice but to run a line across the street, and when somebodies house is going up in flames, you really dont have time to do all that stuff including blocking the street. it usually setup hoses, gather your equipment, plan of attack, and then fight the fire... the less steps that are involved the quicker they can get to saving property and lives.

shell rd in richmond?

I think they stole this one from Backdraft....I howled when I watched this.:rofl:

How much planning could it possibly take to block a street with a fire truck? Drive down the yellow line, put it in park, problem solved.

And the idiots will driver right around the truck. I was on duty in Pentiction and we had the road completely blocked at the north beach by the big hotel...barricades right across the road. I';m standing there next to my Harley, in full uniform, and I watched as a guy stopped his car at the baricade, got out, looked right at me & my flashing red & blue lights behind the baricade...then he moved the baricade aside, got back into his car & started to drive right towards me. He couldn't understand that the road was completely closed. He go a VT for disobey traffic control device and a second for failing to obey my directions. YES there are idiots among us. They usually show up to obstruct, annoy and endanger us at high risk sites. What part of road closed do you not understand sir?

Well, there's only so much one can do - make something idiot-proof, and the universe will build a better idiot.

We get these same ones all the time when we're working new construction on fuel sites... usually at least one a week once the C-store building is up, one every couple days once the lights are on. The whole bloody site is surrounded by fences and littered with trades vehicles, the inside of the store crawling with workers, and some clown will drive on in, park in front of a pump, walk inside, and ask if they're open yet... some will even try to use the pump first before coming inside to ask if they can pre-pay. :facepalm:

I've seen one where the C-lai driving a Mercedes wanted to turn left at the intersection, but the intersection was blocked and the officer held up his hand and told her to go right. Instead, she sat there and kept pointing that she had to turn left there. After the officer told her no, she went into the oncoming traffic lane to try to go around the officer and the roadblock to do the left turn. The officer went up to stop her and told her to pull over (he did let her finish her left turn though...haha) and got her to parallel park so he can give her a ticket. Took her so long that he eventually told her to just stop there (halfway in/out of the parking spot) and did his usual traffic stop stuff. It was hilarious. I was just walking on the street and standing around so I saw the whole thing happen. Some people just won't take no for an answer. The good news for her though was she did manage to do her left turn, a costly one though.

^Cases like that are the REAL reason the TASER was invented.

"I need to go left!"
"You can't, the road is closed."
"I need to go left!"
"No, you have to go around the other way..."
"I need to go left!" <starts turning left>
*ZZZZZZZap!*

Those c-lai can definitely afford the ticket. Would be cool if tickets were a % of total net assets.