Sunday, October 10, 2010

The infamous hose stretcher

Firefighting isn't all drama and speed. Although as an industry it's got it's own share of darkness (or maybe because of it), there is a lighter side that's worth examining.

Just yesterday, one of the rookies in my department's current recruit class asked me if I could help him find the hose stretcher, because he'd been sent to my station the night before and wasn't able to locate it. The guys who were home at the time told him that another station must have borrowed it for their own hose testing, since we'd already done ours a month ago.

I contained my hysterical laughter (barely) and composed myself before saying that I just wasn't sure myself, but the next station over had done their hose testing just last week and probably had it.

You see, with all the tools we have on our engines, it's not hard to understand why rookies make this mistake. They hear about a tool name like "hose stretcher" and they think of something like this:

Or this:


But when you think about a real fire incident, you realize what a hose stretcher actually looks like:

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That's right, rookie.  You ARE the hose stretcher.

2 comments:

  1. I still remember when we got your brother with that trick ... ah, the memories

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  2. Another good one is the "can of a.i.r."

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