Firemen Becoming Familiar With Possibilities of the Aerial Truck
Expensive Apparatus Has Heretofore Been More Ornament Than Use
Down at the Central Fire Station these are busy days. All hands are feeling the influence of a desire that is city-wide in its scope for a more capable and a better disciplined fire department. Chief Clark and his able lieutenant, Assistant Chief Aitken, are the leaders in the movement — the generals who are mapping out the course of drill and instruction whereby the whole tone of the fire-fighting force is surely and steadily being improved.
Ladder drills form not the least interesting of the features of the almost daily programme, and among other things the firemen are being taught the why, the wherefore and the how of getting the big aerial truck into action. This huge and somewhat unwieldy piece of mechanism has almost from the first day on which it was installed at the Central Hall been regarded as more or less of a white elephant on the hands of the department — something which, although it cost enough to build a north side fire hall, was a striking example of how not to spend the city’s dollars. The fact of the matter is that hardly once since the aerial was bought, just nine years ago, has it been of any practical service.
The statement might be broadened into the absolute assertion that the aerial ladder has yet never paid for its axle grease.
London Firemen at Ladder Practice
By London Free Press Staff photographer
It is not so much that the truck is not a good thing of its kind. There is no doubt that, given the proper circumstances, it might prove the turning factor in a big battle against the fiery element. And the proper circumstance has arisen not once but several times since the aerial was installed, but the trouble has always been that the truck was never properly manned, never properly put into action, and therefore, it is but fair to say, never given a chance to prove its worth.
The McClary fire of fifteen months or so ago was a particular instance of this, it being still fresh in the public mind how the big truck lay around for a time like so much useless material whilst the flames licked up the factory, how a few men finally tried to raise the heavy ladders into place, how they were absolutely unable to handle it, and how the thing might have swept the whole factory for all the use this expensive piece of apparatus was.
The truth of the matter has been, first, that the men have never been properly drilled in the use of the aerial, and secondly, that sufficient men are seldom available from the ranks of those plying the hose lines to set the ladders into place. That is why there is a good deal of talk among the aldermen of fitting the truck with the latest type of ladders that can be easily raised, and that is why in the meanwhile Chief Clark is giving his men lots of chances to get acquainted with the present aerial. He wants to have the newest ladders if he can get them, but until the new ones are an actuality he is determined that the men shall know at least something of getting the present ladders into action.
The staff photographer of the Free Press caught the men at one of these afternoon drills, and the result appears in the above picture. The heavy ladder was stretched high into the air and up and down the firemen were nimbly climbing. It isn’t the most pleasant sensation in the world to stand on the top of sixty-five feet of swaying ladder, but there are some of the firemen who seem to like it.
This is notably the case with Assistant Chief Aitken, who likes nothing better than to lead the way up the ladder. He is an expert too in handling himself when he reaches the top rungs, in this being a shining example to the remaining members of the force. When this photograph was taken the forty-foot extension was in place, and a quartet of the firemen were practicing thereon.
