- Joined
- May 6, 2010
- Messages
- 16,238
Many melted plastic light lenses & or windows cracked back when ....especially when parked in front of an asphalt shingled (gasoline siding) frame that lit up before getting water....in 108 we had large stainless steel numbers on the sides of the added on plywood roof covering .....at one job that really lit up the radiant heat focused on one side of the 1 & the sides of 0 & 8 singing the red paint on the plywood making a strange one sided outline....the worst incident was with our '74 Seagrave Tiller at a vacant factory arson job started by diesel fuel that took off after the Aerial was raised ....it burned the whole Officers side of the Rig ....all the lights ....paint & the exterior of the outboard tires.....there was a picture of this by Alex Donchin taken at the height of the Fire from the opposite side of the street .....the picture is somewhere online.....there was also another picture floating around showing the burned side afterwards.....that incident required a lot of work by the Shops......years before when wooden aerials were still around as spares it was the policy that ghetto Trucks could not use a wooden spare so we had to get the spare & take it to a slower area & swap it for their Metal Aerial...this happened one day & when myself & another FF went with the old wooden Rig to their Qtrs (as usual they would not be happy) this particular Unit took great care of their Rig & said please take good care or it....late that night while in front of a supermarket the place lit up....it did melt a few plastic lenses but more so rather than burning the paint the smoke & vapor that was blowing onto the Rig when hit with the radiant heat actually made a dark coating on the paint on most of the inboard side of the Rig....it didn't wash right off....we tried ...but when we swapped it back the guys were pissed & later told us how much elbow grease ....compound .....wax etc it took to clean it.
