Customer Reviews

Aerial Fire Trucks

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The author of this book knows firefighting apparatus. He's been taking pictures of them for years for various manufacturers and others. His book on Pumpers was great. This continues in the same tradition with dozens of beautiful pictures and an interesting history of the evolution of aerials. There si extensive coverage from 1970 to the 21st Century, as well as a brief, interesting look back to 1900. I can't wait for my copy of Hooks & Ladders to arrive.

If you love trucks, engines, and machines, this book is for you! The choice of pictures in this book has a noticeable Chicago-area bias. This is not surprising, as the author is from the Chicago area.

One of the first aerial trucks was the German-designed Magirus. Ironically, the rotating platform it had was originally designed for an artillery piece (p. 17).

Shapiro traces the development of snorkel-based fire equipment, notably the Pitman Snorkel. He also comments: "On the first of December in 1958, a tragic fire broke out at the Our Lady of the Angels school in Chicago. The Snorkel was one of the units sent to the fire scene and put to work performing rescue and fire suppression duties." (p. 16)

This book is not limited to beautiful pictures and general descriptions. Some technical details are also provided. For example, the pump-driven discharge capacity of truck-mounted hoses had risen to the 2,000 gallon-per-minute level (p. 32, 100), then even 3,000 (p. 35) and 5,000 (p. 107, 123). The height to which firefighters can be raised is also a far cry from the early days of wooden ladder-based trucks.

There is a section in this book on future developments in firefighting equipment. Left unanswered is the question about the limits of height to which water can be pumped to fight a high-rise fire. Can some type of machine be built, for example, that would shoot water into the window of a 100th story on fire? Or is that a physical impossibility?

AN INTERESTING AND WORTHY BOOK THAT IS A GREAT READ FOR ANY FIRE BUFF.THE PHOTOGRAPHY IS EXCELLENT AND THE COMMENTARY APPROPRIATE.ALTHOUGH THIS VOLUME IS NOT AN IN DEPTH/ACADEMIC WORK IT IS NONE THE LESS A MUST HAVE FOR ANY FIRE FIGHTING LIBRARY.