Not a good look for the local fire dept

Waiting at a light to turn left onto a fairly major road today at edge of university campus.  I hear sirens, then see a fire truck coming up the road to my right.  My light turns green but I obv wait for the fire truck to pass, as do (amazingly) all the other drivers.  Firetruck moves into oncoming traffic lane and then turns left in front of me to go down the road I'm on. As it passes and I verify no ambulance, etc in tow, I pull out into the intersection to make my left.  About that time I hear a metallic clattering and look to my left to see the fire truck disappearing down the road, while one of it's ladders comes skittering to a stop across the sidewalk 

Miraculously, there was nobody on that sidewalk, this despite being ~5:30p at the edge of a ~40k student campus.

I can only imagine more than a few people will have some serious questions to answer.  This did make me curious tho - for any firefighters out there, I assume there's an extensive protocol that is gone through following every call to ensure the rig is ready to go out on the next, and I assume that protocol includes multiple double checks?  In which case this would entail multiple failures. 

I feel Woody's pyro-senses tingling.

E36 M3 happens

I was a volunteer for 7 years. Every week we checked everything on the trucks. It was all strapped down good and tight. Mostly two or three points of attachment.

On our way to the next village north one day for mutual aid, we laid a few hundred feet of 5" supply line down the middle of the road at 60mph.

E36 M3 happens

Dear Chief, 

While operating the apparatus on Main Street today...

Glad no one was hurt! I'm a volunteer, and yes stuff is checked very regularly (going by a list called a truck check), but unfortunately stuff still happens. Not making excuses, but they may have been in the middle of training with that ladder, got the call, put it up on the truck hastily and not secured it properly. There would be repercussions for a mistake like that where I volunteer.

I was a driver/engineer for 21 years at a busy city department. Nothing ever fell off of my truck but it does happen. Around here the responsibility is on the driver and driver alone. All apparatus doors have sensors that will flash a warning light it they're open, but if the ladder is external to the truck bed it may not have had a sensor to alert the driver if it wasn't secured. 

My truck was very busy and quite often I would be on a call and dispatch would be on the radio asking how long till we cleared and could take the next call. When it's like that, things get hectic and mistakes can happen.

Congrats on your new ladder

I expected this to be about using lights and sirens for a non emergency, but ouch, could have been nasty.

My 'not a good look' story is along the lines of what I expected, although I actually found it hilarious at the time.  Mid 90's spending a couple of weeks at the Ford Naples test track.  The facility is now closed and for sale, with houses literally across the street, but in the mid 90's it was in the middle of nowhere.  The closest lunch was a corner shop gas station / sub shop / general store, 2-3 miles away from the track back towards Naples, still in the middle of nowhere.  A group of us are sat there eating our lunch when we hear several sirens coming hell for leather.  We all look at each other puzzled, then scan the horizon above the trees looking for smoke.  Nothing.  A few seconds later two fire trucks come into view.  The first a tall one on narrow tires for the everglades, the second a regular fire truck.  The come barreling down the road at high speed, lights and sirens, straight through the four way stop junction and into the parking lot.  Our eyes are all big round saucers now getting ready to roll up our lunch and skedaddle.  Then they just shut off the lights and sirens, all get out our calmly from both rigs and mosey into the place to order lunch.  We all laughed, but they probably could have got in trouble, especially for the speed they came through the junction and into the parking lot.  

Glad no one was hurt and hope this is a learning moment for all parties involved.

Some people use hindsight as a weapon. Don't be one of those people. 

Nobody learns anything from "E36 M3 happens" because it's intended to absolve people of their personal responsibility. More appropriately, "people berkeley up" adds ownership to it, and that's the only way anybody can actually learn from what happened.

It's like the mistake people make when calling their collision/crash/wreck/etc an "accident".

When I was in the Army my 1SGT absolutely hated it when any soldier said "E36 M3 happens."  He always replied "E36 M3 happens to E36 M3 heads!"   As I have gotten older, I have learned that he was correct about that.

Not quite the same thing, but years ago I was walking by a fire station in downtown Seattle, when one of the doors opened, and they started up the fire truck and turned the lights on while the crew was grabbing their gear and getting into the truck. I thought "Cool, I'll just watch the truck pull out of the station." As the truck pulled out through the door there was a very loud crash and the sound of metal being ripped and deformed. The truck stopped and the crew jumped out to see what happened. They had left one of the side compartment doors open, which had caught on the frame of the station door. The crew looked at each other and rolled their eyes, and proceeded to unload the compartment that the door was for and then yank on and twist the bent door until the got it detached from the truck. They tossed the mangled door aside, then got back in the truck and took off. 

Oops. Fortunately, when I screw up at my job, it's not so dramatic, and usually no one knows.

One day one of the drivers at my station took a left turn on a green light and hit a bump.  Somehow the humat valve ( a 30 pound fitting that connects the hose to the hydrant) came loose and fell off of the tailboard and started pulling the 5 inch supply line off of the truck. Needless to say, he laid almost all of the 1000 feet of hose before he realized it...

In reply to Autovelox:

Many years ago, the board with all the keys for the cars at the main police division in downtown Toronto had a sign just above it. The sign read, "An 'accident' is a caused occurrence."

I'm putting your 1SGT's words of wisdom in that same mental file.