by Mr Link » February 7, 2016, 4:55 pm
I'd suspect that a lot of the need for water stems from the types of fires they were designed to fight. Large wooden wharves, warehouses, ships, stacks of cargo, timber ore docks, etc. Big fires, with limited land access.
The book
Fireboats, by Paul Ditzel 1989, also mentions that some cities like Detroit, Rochester and Buffalo once had high pressure firefighting mains installed downtown, that were pressurized by either fireboats or shore based pumps. In the case of Detroit, circa 1900 there were 13 mains, each 8 inches in diameter and about a mile long, that served special hydrants spaced no more than 300 feet apart. At each hydrant was a telephone jack so firefighters could talk to the fireboat, which at that time was the
Detroiter, with a pumping capacity of 5000 gallons per minute.
Even without pressurized mains, fireboats would and still do supply water to land based crews via hoses. I believe that was the case in New York after the 9/11 attacks when three fireboats, including the retired and restored
John J. Harvey, supplied water to Manhattan for 80 hours straight.
Not quite sure what Los Angeles does with the 38,000 gallons per minute capacity of their current
Warner L. Lawrence aka Fireboat #2.
http://nonplused.org/panos/fb2/index.htmlI'd suspect that a lot of the need for water stems from the types of fires they were designed to fight. Large wooden wharves, warehouses, ships, stacks of cargo, timber ore docks, etc. Big fires, with limited land access.
The book [i]Fireboats[/i], by Paul Ditzel 1989, also mentions that some cities like Detroit, Rochester and Buffalo once had high pressure firefighting mains installed downtown, that were pressurized by either fireboats or shore based pumps. In the case of Detroit, circa 1900 there were 13 mains, each 8 inches in diameter and about a mile long, that served special hydrants spaced no more than 300 feet apart. At each hydrant was a telephone jack so firefighters could talk to the fireboat, which at that time was the [b]Detroiter[/b], with a pumping capacity of 5000 gallons per minute.
Even without pressurized mains, fireboats would and still do supply water to land based crews via hoses. I believe that was the case in New York after the 9/11 attacks when three fireboats, including the retired and restored [b]John J. Harvey[/b], supplied water to Manhattan for 80 hours straight.
Not quite sure what Los Angeles does with the 38,000 gallons per minute capacity of their current [b]Warner L. Lawrence aka Fireboat #2[/b].
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[url]http://nonplused.org/panos/fb2/index.html[/url][/u]