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The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

gizmodo.com

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Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#201

Post by frandroid »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #69
mc32 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe but don’t tell their managers who would then layoff the 95% thinking they’re making the team 100% efficient and then wonder why things went to hell in hand basket.

a retired police officer once told me that the quantity of officers citywide goes through a repeated cycle from low to high to low again. when the number of officers is too low and there's too much crime, the people demand that the government hire more. so government does that. and crime goes down. then the public notices all these police officers "doing nothing" and complains about wasted government resources. so, n…

Because crime is directly caused by the lack of police officers there to "prevent" it. &eyeroll&

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#202

Post by mindcrime »

lisper wrote: post #22
mindcrime wrote: post #8

There's an old saying among firefighters: "The fire service is 200+ years of tradition, unimpeded by progress". Now obviously that isn't strictly true, and SF does have some good reasons for sticking with their wooden ladders... but one can't help but suspect that sheer tradition is a somewhat significant factor. Of course some departments adopt change faster than others, and some kinds of change are adopted more rea…

> one can't help but suspect that sheer tradition is a somewhat significant factor Only if you didn't read the article. "There's a city-specific reason why San Francisco has stuck with wood rather than swap over to metals, and the answer lies in looking up. The high-voltage cables and wires that guide the city's (oft-maligned) public transport system Muni, and trolley cars crisscross above nearly every street, mean t…

Only if you didn't read the article.

Did you read the comment you're replying to? I said very specifically "SF does have some good reasons for sticking with their wooden ladders". And note that I said "a somewhat significant factor" NOT "the only factor" or even "the biggest factor".

In fact, I did read the article, and I see nothing that contradicts the suggestion that tradition is "a somewhat significant factor" in their continued use of wooden ladders.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#203

Post by SllX »

xixi77 wrote: post #15

But, are these approved by the American Ladder Institute? https://www.americanladderinstitute.org

I think the better question is: do they do the job the SFFD requires them to do?

Given one of the ladders talked about in the article was over 60 years old and still in service, I think the safe answer is: yeah, they do the job.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#204

Post by sudouser »

Cofike wrote: post #195
eigenvector wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest differences between Europe and North America in this regard is that in European cities, emergency vehicles have to be designed to fit a 1000-year-old city in terms of width, turning radius, maximum weight, etc. This leads to a much more compact shape and shorter wheelbase. In North America streets are designed to fit emergency vehicles. You're not allowed to build a street so narrow that a fire eng…

You should see some streets in San Francisco. No way that a fire engine is fitting on those.

many alleys fit your description too

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#206

Post by lostcolony »

sli wrote: post #150
WJW wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does your manager know this before you do though?

I would never in a million years, as a developer, give my personal phone number to a client. That's probably why. I get the same issue where I work. The client states that "everything is broken," but it often turns out that their own servers are down (or sometimes our API guys made a breaking change and I wasn't informed, but that's not common anymore). I find this stuff out when I get to work in the morning, because…

I think the implication is that the system should alert you directly. Though if you are building systems for clients to run, you obviously would want the system alerting them, not you.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#207

Post by freehunter »

enriquto wrote: post #24
BurningFrog wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense for a job where 95% of the time is spent waiting for an emergency to react to .

> a job where 95% of the time is spent waiting for an emergency to react to. this describes quite accurately the work of many people maintaining computer systems

This was me working as an information security analyst. Just waiting for a security incident. Then my manager realized I had a lot of downtime and put me to work doing compliance reports as well, then wondered why when a security incident happened the compliance reports stopped being generated.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#208

Post by qop »

WJW wrote: post #127
qop wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thing that came to my mind too! I've had two "Please call me, it's broke" calls just this morning!

Why does your manager know this before you do though?

It's actually the opposite way around for me, but I fill a senior role that intersects directly with high-value vendors. I'm basically on-call 24/7 and I am in the office whenever I feel like it or when I need to work on code.

I log my interactions with my supervisor, he will occasionally check with me to follow up but I can fix 99% of what they call me about on my own. If I need help, it's usually just expert knowledge that I can ask around the office for.

But of course other devs have different roles and workflows.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#209

Post by lisper »

mindcrime wrote: post #202
lisper wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one can't help but suspect that sheer tradition is a somewhat significant factor Only if you didn't read the article. "There's a city-specific reason why San Francisco has stuck with wood rather than swap over to metals, and the answer lies in looking up. The high-voltage cables and wires that guide the city's (oft-maligned) public transport system Muni, and trolley cars crisscross above nearly every street, mean t…

Only if you didn't read the article. Did you read the comment you're replying to? I said very specifically "SF does have some good reasons for sticking with their wooden ladders". And note that I said "a somewhat significant factor" NOT "the only factor" or even "the biggest factor". In fact, I did read the article, and I see nothing that contradicts the suggestion that tradition is "a somewhat significant factor" in…

> Did you read the comment you're replying to?

Yes.

> I said "a somewhat significant factor" NOT "the only factor" or even "the biggest factor".

That's true. But even "somewhat significant" isn't justified by the facts.

> SF does have some good reasons for sticking with their wooden ladders

And they have one overwhelming reason: aluminum is not an option because of the overhead muni lines.

So it's possible that tradition has a role, but there's no evidence that it is even "somewhat" significant.

Re: The San Franciso Fire Department makes its own wooden ladders by hand

#210

Post by freehunter »

mrguyorama wrote: post #100
chrisseaton wrote: post #11

Americans seem to take a lot of pride in their fire brigades - their fire engines are still shiny and polished with more traditional signage and the fire fighters still wear helmets with their traditional shape. In the United Kingdom they wear more simple uniforms and the engines are just a box shape with no bells any more - seems a shame. Usually it's UK the has more ceremony in these kind of things.

Honestly, from quickly looking at some images of UK firefighters, it seems the difference to me is that their equipment is modern , an not just in a design sense. Their helmets look better designed to protect the user and their fire engines look like they weren't purchased in the 70's. So maybe the difference is that in the UK, they don't have to use old equipment

Maybe I'm not looking at the right pictures, because a quick Google Images search for "uk firefighters" and "us firefighters", I see no functional difference in what they're wearing, and the only difference in the firetrucks is that American firetrucks are massive bricks and UK firetrucks are either a European-style truck that looks basically the same as a US-style truck or are a Ford Transit van with some hoses.

The helmets look exactly the same except the ones in the UK don't have brims on the back.

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