Stuff You Should Know - Fire twucks! Fire twucks! (sic)

Episode Date: November 22, 2018

Who doesn't love fire engines? We certainly do. So much that we geeked out on this one in a big way. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the Backyard Guest House over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House StuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Beep, beep. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Fire Chief Bryant, and there's Jerry Fire Commissioner Roland. I'm just a class one firefighter, but that's okay because this is stuff you should know, the fire truck edition. I should say, I think every time we say fire truck, we should say fire twerk, okay, for the whole episode. Fire twerk? Because that's about the level of engagement that everyone

can expect from us this episode, because I love fire trucks. Like my inner three-year-old is like, yes, let's do this and give me like a Fisher Price drum to bang on while we're talking about it. Maybe one of those xylophones. Yeah. And if you hear me sighing repeatedly, just to give you context, it's election day. Right. And I'm just in a bad mood. Don't get political chuck. I'm just, oh, what was it I said? I said, I'm already dreading my hangover that I'm going to have tomorrow. That's right. And I haven't, I was like, I'm not going to drink for a few days, proceeding Tuesday. Oh, you're saving your liver up? Yeah, just because, man, let's do, let's talk about fire trucks. They're happy. Let's. Have you

been on our fire truck? Yeah, our company fire truck. It's the way back machine is now he tricked out fire truck. Yes. And you know what's funny? To bring this full circle, we have in one of our little quiet rooms, we have little quiet rooms, you can go like take a phone call or sometimes they pick a nap. And we have one of our old school illustrations that we used to blow those up and frame them of a fire truck. Yeah. The old house stuff works website lead Dempsey made those lead Dempsey and it looks great. And so I was on the phone this morning. I got up early to go vote. Emily, Emily texted me, which by the way is, I mean, I got it out of the way, but I waited in a longer line than, you know,

that first rush. Yeah. It's a longer line than it like 915. Emily. Yeah, so I guess I kind of had to I go vote. Emily calls me and says that my daughter's upset because she thinks I went to boat and she's upset because I didn't take her sailing. So she's crying. Emily's like, I don't know what to do. Can you get on FaceTime at least and show her that your work? I was like, yeah, and not sailing. Let me put on my captain's hat just to message her first. I thought about that. So I go in the quiet room, get on FaceTime. And in the background of FaceTime is that fire twerk. And that immediately took over the conversation because she was like, fire truck and all kids love fire trucks. Jerry's

just talking about her. Her daughter loves fire trucks. And so in a weird way, it all just sort of came around. Nice. I want to get in on this too. Momo loves fire trucks as well. Ooh, most dogs hate fire trucks. Oh, she loves them. Man, my dogs howl at the moon. Oh yeah, mom doesn't do that. Really sirens don't. No. Yeah. My dogs not big on thunder. Yeah, my dogs don't mind thunder, but they hate. They hate fire sirens. Just sirens. They're, they're hearing just right. I guess. Or maybe they're singing songs of love. Yeah, they're like, I love fire trucks. I didn't, I've never asked to be honest, but they howl at sirens. So I want to settle something right out of the gate that I never understood.

You've heard of a fire truck. You've heard of a fire engine. You've probably heard somebody point to a fire truck and go, there's a fire truck. And then somebody else points to that same fire truck and says, there's a fire engine. Yes. It's interchangeable. That's actually wrong. There is a difference between a fire truck and a fire engine. And the difference is fascinating. Yeah, but still in the practical world of just people and kids, largely semantical. But yeah, there is a difference though. People and kids who are wrong. Well, let me, let me say this. We will explain to you the difference and then it's up to you if you want to go around to people and say, that's a fire truck, not a fire engine. Actually, we should advise

you now not to do that. Don't do it, but just hold that knowledge in your brain. Sure. So what's the diff? Just saying it to yourself is that's a big difference. Well, one actually holds water. Isn't that the main diff? Yeah. If you take away the word fire, right? From fire truck and fire engine. You got an engine and a truck. And if you understand the origin of fire engines, it will make total sense. Fire engines were originally just a water pump used to douse water on a fire. It wasn't on a truck. It wasn't on wheels. It was on a sled that people dragged from one place to another in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and America. It was an engine for pumping water, right? Yes. And if today, if you are

appropriately using the word fire engine, what you're talking about is a vehicle with four wheels that is basically the point. More than four wheels. It's two, five wheels, four and a half. I got one in the center. Is to move a giant amount of water and a pump and some hoses to a fire to douse water on the fire. Same thing as it was in the 1680s. It is today. It's just updated to make it a lot more easy to get it from point A to point B. Right. That's a fire engine. What's a fire truck? Well, a fire truck doesn't have that water tank full of water. Right. It has like ladders, firefighters. It can even be hooked up to a hydrant. Yeah. But it doesn't like if you live out in the sticks and your little

farmhouses on fire, which is super sad. Yeah. But in other words, if you don't live near a fire hydrant, you can still get that fire put out if you have a fire engine nearby. Right. And usually if there's like a structure fire or something, the first truck that shows up is going to be the fire engine. They're going to say, we need to get the water and usually the foam out there and start spraying this thing down. Yeah. And a fire truck may not even show up depending on how the fire engine does controlling the fire with the water. Yeah. Or, but they show up because they're kind of just bored anyway. Right. They are bored. They're like, we've cooked chili five times today. I'm so tired of chili.

Yeah. But the fire truck, if it does show up, it'll show up with a bunch of firefighters who probably aren't going to mess with any hoses. They're going to run in there and rescue people. They're going to collapse holes into the roof to get the water in there. They're like assisting the people with the hoses and we'll get much more into depth about this. But let's talk about the history of fire engines a little bit. You ready for that? Yeah. Because like you said, they were pulled by people and the downside of that, there are many downsides to that, but one of the biggest ones is once they get to the actual place where they need it, they're tired. Yeah. Pulling like a giant

metal tank of water with a pump attached to it. So they're like, we're here, but we're not very good for work right now. Right. We're here. We're tired. Get used to it for like 15 minutes. Eventually, they started to use horses. But again, you know, these things were heavy. So even horses wore out, you know, after, you know, six or seven blocks, these horses were like, now I'm tired. Right. The people would be like, are you tired horse? And the horse would just stomp once. Yeah. You know. So that helps all problems. But it was really the advent of the, you know, not the fire engine, but the car motor. Well, yeah. First it was a steam powered truck basically. But the early firefighters were like, those

things blow up and they're not very reliable. So it actually didn't catch on very well. It wasn't until like the motor powered vehicle, like a diesel powered motor engine, a combustion engine. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah. And I think about the 1910s when fire engines started carrying those or being moved around on those. That's when it really started. And then for a little while until like the 20s or 30s, steam and horse drawn firefighting equipment. Yeah, they coexisted. Move to like the fire trucks. Yeah. Whereas like the fire engine moving this heavy, huge amount of water, that was a combustion engine that did that. Yeah. And then it says here in 1911, those Mack trucks started pumping out engines and

motorized vehicles. That really changed things. And then of course, if you listen to our skyscrapers podcast in the 1930s, buildings started getting taller and taller and or our hotel fires podcast. And then that became a problem. They're like, we just figured out how to get here quickly. And now you're building these tall buildings that catch on fire. So that's when these ladder, ladder technology started, you know, they were kind of forced to ramp up their game in terms of getting people higher and higher up. Yeah. So when you, when you had like horses finally pulling stuff, you still had tired firefighters who had to run to the fire. So they put on sideboards and then it just made it harder for the horses.

So finally somebody said, let's just separate these two things. Right. Let's come up with the fire trucks and fire engines. And the fire trucks are going to move the firefighters to the fire so they won't be tired. And then somebody said, well, now we have skyscrapers. So now we need a different kind of truck, the ladder truck. Right. So technically, and from what I can tell, you're going to find components of all these. And I think all of the different kinds of fire, let's just call them fire trucks. Okay. Okay. But there are also specialized trucks, trucks that specialize in delivering water, trucks that specialize in delivering equipment and personnel, and then trucks that specialize in ladders. Yes.

Okay. Yes. So that's kind of, you can have it all in one truck or you can have it broken out into three specialized trucks. Yeah. And, and what kind of trucks you have in your local municipality or county depends on a lot of things, how well funded, how many people live there, how rural it is or how jam-packed it is. And it's really, I mean, it's a science in itself in a city like New York. Yeah. To make sure you're covered fully. Right. You know, like every nook and cranny of New York City is covered. What was that early like computer civilization simulation called? I think it was called like civilization or something like that. No, is it a game? Yeah. I don't know. But there was a thing where

like fires would break out in your town. And if you didn't think about that, did you? If you, right. So you had to send out the fire brigade. Yeah. And if you just neglected it, then all of a sudden the area around it would fall into ruin and then there'd be like discontent among the population. You're like, man, I was having fun building a shopping mall. Right. Now I have to deal with this burned out building, right? I can't remember what it was called. I'm sure we're going to hear from everybody. That wasn't the Sims, was it? No, no. It was, it was much less sophisticated than the Sims, but very engrossing for sure. I've never played one of those. I think that was actually the slogan, the quote on the box, much less sophisticated

than Sims, but very engrossing nonetheless. So with World War II or post World War II is when you got these buckets. I don't think we mentioned the bucket brigade, you know, you've heard that term. That was prefire engine. And that's when they, you know, had long lines of men filling up buckets of water and handing them to the guy next to you. That's how they fought fires. Pretty amazing. I saw, I just want to say real quick, I saw, I think on Twitter, there was a bookstore in, I believe, the UK that moved locations down, like down the road, thanks to basically a bucket brigade of volunteers who just handed it book by book and moved it from one location to another. Then they charged the guy. A book burning brigade. I thought you

were a volunteer. So post World War II is when we got what we know as cherry pickers. If you've ever seen these buckets on an extended arm, like maybe someone repairing the phone line or the cable guy or whatever, it's the same thing. It's a much safer way to rescue someone than throwing them over your shoulder at the top of a ladder, which they'll still do. Yeah, there's ladders that will extend you up and buddy, you're hanging on to the top of the ladder. Oh man. But if you're in a bucket, you imagine something scarier. No, I can't because they have ladders that go up, you know, like 15 stories. Yeah. That's a hundred, that's a 15 story building just standing on the top of a ladder. I would literally lose my mind. Yeah, you're not cut out to be that guy. No,

I'm not. A bucket, I would just crawl down in the bottom of and be like, get me down and just scream that the whole time. But I don't think I would lose my mind. I just, you know, lose my ass. Well, but most of those buckets are open-sided anyway. So you still might lose your mind. I mean, they have railings and stuff, but no, doesn't matter. I've been in one of those on a film set, like I've been pretty high up in a cherry picker. And it's, yeah, I mean, they're, I don't have the big heights thing, but I was still kind of like, no, if this thing, something happened, I would be in bad shape. Right. Imagine if you actually were also afraid of heights, right? You had like the rational fear and then the irrational fear combined. But yeah,

some of them do have this. With the ladder, the ladder will go up and then it's usually on a turntable, which is basically a gear that moves it left and right. Yeah. But with one of those cherry pickers, usually it's an arm that has like at least one or two joints in it. So you can kind of move that thing all over, like one of those 1980s robot arms. Yeah, you got a little joystick. Yeah. And you're, it's just like playing a video game. It's like a rock-on-sock-on robot, but with a fire. But the 1960s is where we really sort of got to where we are now with the quote, unquote, modern fire engine. And since then it's just gotten even better. Yeah. They're not all red. Yeah. If you don't have a red fire engine though, it's like, what are you doing? I like those white

ones. Do you? Yeah, they're kind of cool. I seem communist to me. Or the yellow ones. What is that? Yeah. I've seen yellow ones, I think. I have to say, Charles, when I was researching this article, there is no more guarantee of local press coverage than a city buying a new fire truck. Oh, yeah. I cannot tell you how many entries there are for different towns around the country. Look what we got. Yep. The fire department debuts new fire truck. Yeah. They're all so shiny. Yeah. All the chrome. Yeah. They're like, look at how much it costs. And it's all ours because it's taxpayer-owned. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I think it's cute. I think we should, I mean, I would love to do another follow-up at some point on like fire houses, because the whole thing, I mean, there's something

about being a kid. You're just enthralled by it. Yeah. Because you walk by, you know, there's one right there in Oakhurst behind where all the restaurants are. So people with kids are constantly walking by this thing and the doors always open. Smells like chili. And the firefighters are always sitting around like, I mean, obviously, unless they're on an active fire, they're, they look like they're just enjoying each other. And they always smile and invite the kids in and to take a look. And it's just, it's such a cool job. Come on in and have some chili. I love it. Is there a cooler job where you're like putting your life on the line, but you're still, you know, so just like I've been on military bases. Those, those people aren't just hanging out,

smiling. There's no chili on military bases. There's canned chili in your backpack. Yeah, I know, but you don't want that. That's just to keep you alive. Sea rations. There's nothing joyful about that chili, you know. I don't know. I think you make a good point. Do you want to take a break? I do. All right, let's take a break. And we'll, we'll talk about what's on these amazing trucks. bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you

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bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, everybody, let's get down to it. What's on fire? Let's start with the fire engine. This house stuff works article. Boy, was it dry? It was dry. There was a lot of, what's it called when you conflate? I guess a lot of conflation where basically they make it sound like it's all just on one truck. And I guess it was because I think they made a visit to a North Carolina fire department to look at their truck and then based the entire article on that. But the writer was kind of funny. It was like, and then there was this thing and then there was this thing and this thing was cool. And then

they had a thing here. Yeah. And they let me sit and pull the, run the sirens. But you know, again, this is not, they're all shapes and sizes. Right. That's my point. I think this is sort of just a standard, when you see a standard fire engine, you can count on a lot of this stuff being on it. Is that okay? Yeah. So one thing that you're gonna, you're gonna have on an engine is a big tank of water. This is an engine mostly. Right. Right. But you also have the ability, and this is really neat, if there's a lake nearby or a swimming pool even, or obviously fire hydrants are handy, you can suck water from those things and use it. But it's, it doesn't just go straight into a hose. It runs through the truck. And then through the, I mean, there are

hoses that attach to this stuff or suck it out, but, but you're running it through the central engine. Right. So you can regulate all that stuff. Right. And like an engine has three components, like every fire engine has at least three components, a tank filled with water that it transports to the fire. Yes. A pump that pressurizes that water for being pumped out, and then lines or hoses that, that the pumped out water shoots from onto the fire. So many hoses. A lot of different hoses. This article spelled out every single one of them. Yeah. And what I gathered too was they want options, options, options so they can have speed, speed, speed. Right. So hoses like they'll, they'll have the big huge, you know, 500 footer. But then in

compartments, they'll have 25 footers and 50 footers because they just want to be able to get water the fastest possible way. And that's not all the times with the longest hose. Yeah. And it's also not necessarily the hose with the widest diameter. That's the best for the job, right? Right. It could be a smaller fire. So you don't need quite as much water. So there, there is a lot of, a lot of split second decision, but decisions in, in hose selection, basically. And from what I gather, the fire captain is telling the crew, like, we're probably going to need these hoses, you take this hose, you take that hose, ready break kind of thing on the way to the fire. So it's not like the individual firefighters are necessarily deciding for themselves.

Although I could be wrong. I don't know. I'm totally speaking out of turn, but just cobbling together separate facts. That's the impression I have. Yeah. I think you're right. I think, I mean, obviously when they get there, there's an assessment period that's super fast. Really fast. But on the way, I think you're right. I think they have an idea because they've been radioed. We've got a, you know, an apartment building that's four stories in this many units, and the fire is largely on the top floors. So on the way, the captain who sits in the passenger seat is radioing to the firefighters in what's called the jump seat area, which is that little area behind which carries like what, six people? Four to six. Four to six people.

So there's up to like eight people in a fire engine from what I see. So they're radioing back and saying, all right, when we hit the ground, we're going to need three 100 footers. And there are different ports on the, you know, sides or the back or the top of the fire engine. It's not just like, well, there's only one area where we can get this water. Right. Again, they just want all sorts of options. So when they get there, they can kind of hit the ground running. Right. So they literally hit the ground running when they get there. The driver, the house of works article made it sound like the driver is invariably the pump operator. I don't know that that's true or not, but there is somebody who's designated the motor pump operator, the MPO. And they,

look at you, you know, they hop out and they jump up onto the truck and they start the pump. And the first thing that happens when that pump starts, the very least this house of works article had a truck that had an impeller water pump on it. And it uses centrifugal force, like it's rotors, like a turbine basically spinning really fast. And when water hits it, it slings it outside. Yeah. And in doing so, the centrifugal force applied to it creates pressure. So it pressurizes the water and they open the valve in the tank. Because remember, they've got maybe 1000 gallons of water. Yeah, it kind of depends. But yeah, that's a lot of water. It's a ton of water. And they turn the pump on and they open the valve that dumps the tank, the water from the tank

onto the pump. So that's being pressurized. And then the pump sends it out to the hoses. The reason that they do this is they want to be able to start dousing this flame, this fire with water immediately. But at the same time, they're also looking around for the fire hydrant to connect to for like you said, a pond to drain from, a swimming pool nearby. They can drain your swimming pool if they need to. Yeah, if you're the homeowner. What are you gonna do? Get that out of my pool. I don't like that neighbor that much. Yeah. But they're looking for other sources of water. And they can actually set up something called a drop tank, which is basically a collapsible portable pool above ground pool. Is that what that is? Yes. Okay. That was a little confusing.

It was a little confusing. But yeah, it's just something that just is semi-rigid that you stand up and other fire trucks can come in from other areas and dump their tanks into the pool. And then you've got the main fire truck drawing water out of it. So it's like a temporary holding facility. But you're looking for another source of water because if you have a thousand gallon tank and you're using one of the hose lines that's spewing out a thousand gallons a minute, you have one minute of water. Do the math. You need a lot more than that. So that's just basically to get things started while the other firefighters on the engine hop off and start connecting to another source of water, whether it's a fire hydrant or a pond or a swimming pool. Yeah,

I would like to hear from some firefighters about use of the onboard water versus drawn water. But I have a feeling you're probably right is that that's just for the immediate like while you're getting hooked up to the hydrant, we're going to go ahead and douse this thing. Yeah. Time is of the essence. Time is of the essence, of course. So all these lines, it's really kind of beautiful in its simplicity. These lines are color coded. So the hoses and the lines all have colors. So the person up there doesn't have to like, you know, again, with time being of the essence, it's very simple which, because they're in control up there on that board of which hoses are being enacted at any given time. Right. And there are, you know, there are relief valves built in. So if you shut

off one hose, the other one doesn't go, whoa. Like double the pressure. Yeah. All of a sudden, it's all the water's going into that one. Turns into like a cartoon fire hose. You know, like eight people. It's like that. What was it? Oh, Roxanne, the Steve Martin movie. Yeah. Did that happen in that? Yeah, it was sort of the updated version of Cyrano de Bergerac. Oh, I'm familiar. No, but I couldn't pronounce it right. You did it. Was it in that? All right. But there were firefighters. Right. But did they end up like being lifted off of their feet? There were some funny scenes where Steve Martin's like on the telephone and in the background at a practice fire like Zaniness is going on. I'm surprised.

In the background. I don't remember that at all. That was a good movie. I think I blocked that out. The whole movie? At least that part. Yeah. All right. So that's what's going on with the water. There's also foam like you were talking about. These days, this foam fire retardants do a great job of sometimes they'll spray it on to make sure something doesn't catch on fire. I don't get the picture that it's always to put out of fire. Is that right? I think they use foam to make sure stuff doesn't reignite. Yeah. Depending on the type of foam or depending on the type of fire, you'll use a different type of foam. Right. Like one prevents combustible. Class A, I think, is to prevent re-ignition. Right. Of like maybe like a hot wood fire.

Maybe. It says here class B is more for car fires or if there's like gasoline that could ignite. Yeah. And I was looking into it very, I think actually foam deserves its own podcast because apparently it's super toxic. Oh, I'm sure. And like routinely destroys water supplies when it gets in it. Yeah. But I also saw that they make some from proteins, which is, you know, it's natural. So I'm sure it's fine. You can probably eat it after a fire or something. What does that mean? Is it like we turned a cow into foam? Probably. So it glues from. Oh. And Jello. Yeah. Should do a show on Jello. No. Wait. Did we? I think we did. No, that was Lego. No, dude, I think we did. Remember Jello molds.

Did we? Yes. Oh, good Lord. Oh, that was a good one if I remember correctly. I have no memory of that. I really believe that we did an episode on Jello. All right. And I think it was good. See, this is why when people ask us on stage, like, what was your favorite episode? It's like, I say disco every single time because it's the only one I can remember routinely, but there's so many, literally hundreds of episodes that I love that we've done, which makes me feel very proud of our work. You know, the fact that we don't look back on it and say like, you know? Just jackhammers. Basically. I think it's great. I agree. Not to pat ourselves on the back or break our arms doing so. I'm just saying I'm kind of proud of what we've done over

the last decade, Chuck. Agreed. Congratulations. Congratulations, Chuck. Congratulations, Jerry. Oh, yeah. I forgot that. She just gave you a look. She's got a salad she's eating. She's not even paying attention. So hoses are called blinds, I think, on the job. Like on firefighters, they don't call them hoses. No, they call them blinds. Yeah. Yeah, you're a chump if you call it a hose. Hey, what kind of hose is that? You'll get laughed out of fire. So cross lay hoses are hoses well, I think that are laid on the ground. Is that right? I believe that they are coiled up laying over one another and they're easy to get to on the side of the truck. You can just grab the end of it and run. Okay. And they may even be pre-connected.

There's a type of hose that's pretty appropriately named pre-connect. It's already connected. So if you're the pump operator and you see one of your guys running with the pre-connect three, you turn on indigo lever three. That's right. Maybe yellow four, whatever it is. And then all of a sudden they've got water coming through it. Yeah, they have booster lines. I mean, again, we're not going to go through all these different lines, but it's just very easy to say they all vary in diameter and length, depending on what your needs are. And depending on the diameter, that will determine how much water can come through at a time. Sure. And some of them are up to a thousand gallons a minute. That's a lot of juice. But again, that's your whole tank in a

minute. And I was like, gosh, that's so fast. That must be like a whole Olympic pool in an hour or something. No, it's 11 hours. So if you're a firefighter and you are putting out a fire next to an Olympic-sized pool, you're like, yeah, 11 hours worth of water. Yeah, swimmers are bummed though. Yeah. No trail today. How long it would take to fill in those things up? Well, depends on what kind of hose. I'm sorry, line. Right. Yeah. The real fun part though, like if every child an adult alike always wants to look at that deluge gun. And that is the thing that is not a hose, but it is the thing that sits atop the fire engine that is like sort of the equivalent of the Gatlin gun on top of the tank in warfare, that you can just point that thing and water's being

sucked from the hydrant straight through. So it's regulated right into that deluge gun. And just a massive, massive amount of water can go really, really high and far. Yep. It's kind of that simple. It is. And I imagine that's, you know, I don't know if everyone, I am curious to hear from firefighters, like if you have a permanent designation or if it's a tiered thing, like you work your way up to deluge gun or if that's the lowest job because I would guess not is because it's because you're just there on the truck or and maybe the more experienced firefighters are on that ladder going into the building, or if they just take turns or draw straws, like that's what I don't know. I don't know either, but I would guess that if

you're manning the day or humaning the deluge gun, you are pretty experienced because you've got basically the whole trucks worth of water at your fingertips. Or whatever water, you know, all the water in the world connected. But if you haven't connected up yet and they're like, start with the deluge gun, which from what I understand would be something that they would do because use the deluge gun to kind of dampen down a fire. Yeah, that initial thing. You can get closer to it with the lines, you know, and the personnel. So it might be like the first thing you hit a fire with. So maybe the most experienced firefighter, because if you put the rookie back there, they're like, you're, that building's not even on fire. Right. And you're

pointing the wrong way. Jackson. Because they go by last name. Sure. I think somebody's, there's got to be a firefighter named Jackson. Firefighter Jackson, the rookie. Again, more hoses. They have hoses called curb jumpers because they're on the curb. So many hoses. They have hoses that are just carried up like that you can put over your shoulder. It's called a hose pack. It's like all bundled together. So you might carry that on your shoulder up the ladder in order to, once you get in there, you're like, I need another 50 feet of hose, man. I'm inside and you've got one slung over your shoulder, bam, bundled together, ready to go. They also have hoses that will run up ladders too. Yeah. So there's a line that will run alongside

the ladder, usually a five inch diameter line, which I think a five D five ID. Okay. I think pumps 250 gallons a minute. It's just significant. I mean, that's a lot of water, but they do that so that you can shoot water down onto a fire, which can be helpful for like a roof fire or something like that. And then they also have a lot of different nozzles too. Oh, sure. A different nozzle does different jobs. Like if you have a piercing nozzle, I hadn't heard about one of these. They sound extremely dangerous. Yeah. It can shoot right through walls. And I'm guessing like dry wall walls, probably not a brick wall, but who knows? I'm sure it could shoot right through a window. But if you have a fire in another room and you can't get to it, you just use one of those piercing

nozzles and it shoots right through the wall. You know what I'd call that if I was a fire person? What? A master blaster. No. To get the master blaster up here. Yeah. We got to shoot through some sheet rock. Wasn't that the guy with the small guy? Yeah. Controlling the bigger guy in Beyond the Thunderdome, right? That was the only one they appeared in, wasn't it? Yeah. You just nailed all of that. Thank you. I didn't spoil Beyond the Thunderdome, did I? Yeah, except you have to say it like Tina Turner. You have to say master blaster. I can't improve on what you just did. And then there's the ladders, of course. Like you said, some of these bad boys can go like 150 feet in the air via hydraulics, which is totally frightening.

If you're going that high up, the truck is going to have what are called outriggers. And those are basically just these huge, heavy metal legs that come out from the side of the truck and land on the ground to really stabilize that truck. They expand its center of gravity so it doesn't tip. Yeah. But they add so much pressure and force. Oh, man. They actually have to put down pads in between the outrigger and the ground so that it doesn't just go right through the ass. Crush the concrete sidewalk. Yeah, it's pretty cool. This is all cool. It's so funny how the little kid comes out when you start talking about this stuff. Just like big, heavy things. You want to take an ad break? I need to settle down. Yeah, we need to put our inner five-year-olds in time out.

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

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Our inner five-year-olds are being very quiet again. They're behaving. Yes. So we've got the fire engine done, fire or ladder truck done, basically, right? That ladder is telescoped up. You got the outriggers in place. It's a four-alarm fire and things are going well. So you're probably going to see other fire trucks show up. Yes.

This is the classic literal version of the fire truck, which is basically a human and equipment transporter. That's what it's for. Yeah. And, you know, if you look at a fire truck and they've got all those compartments running along the sides, they are all full of goodies, like candy, all kinds of fun stuff. Baby lambs. You're talking about the nozzles, of course.

There's something called a barrel strainer. So if you have to throw, if you have to suck water out of a lake, you don't want to suck up fish through there. No. Oh, wow, that would be kind of funny looking. It'd be mean. It would be super mean. Have you ever seen video of a...

Salmon ladder? No. I've seen that. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, fish ladders. But when they, when they, it's not seed. Oh, stock. When they stock a lake.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Sometimes they do it from airplanes. And have you seen the one of the close up of the fish just going like, I have not. It's something to see. It's either animal abuse or it's a wild ride that the fish is like, man, that's cool. I think it's both.

Yeah. And now I'm in a big new home. Yeah. And then someone will catch me by putting a hook through my mouth. Right. And they're like, you'll never believe how I got here. Emily gets so sad when she sees fish or people. Yeah.

Yeah, she just can't help but think of the fish. Even catching release? Yeah. And I've said that. It's like, what about catching release? She's like, well, would you want someone to hook you, pull you out of the water and then just remove the hook and throw you back in? She makes a good point.

She does. What else? There's all sorts of tools to like bus through walls and pull down ceilings. Yeah. Well, that's so, okay, let's just put this out there. If you show up on a fire engine, your job is to run lines. You're running the pump. Yeah.

You're the captain being like, do this, do that. Somebody light my cigar, that kind of thing. If you show up on a ladder truck, you're probably working a ladder. If you show up on a fire truck, you are there to work the fire. You're there to rescue people inside the fire. Yes. Same with the ladder truck probably too. You're there to manage the fire.

You're tracking it to see if it's moving from one place to another. Or if it's starting to die down. You're in there pulling down sheetrock. With a pike pole? Yeah. If you're pulling it from the ceiling. Or a halogen tool? Yeah.

If you're pulling walls down. That may be halogen actually. Probably. Yeah. Sounds Irish, right? Sure. Which, by the way, I want to say, Rescue Me is probably the greatest firefighter related TV show of all time.

I've never seen it. The Dennis Leary Show? I know the show. I've never seen it. It was really good. Really? Yeah. It was bonkers, but it was very good.

And Dennis Leary does a great job. I'm surprised you watched that. It just doesn't seem like a Josh show. Yeah. I was into it for a while. Yeah. That and then the shield too. Interesting.

Yeah. All right. You know me that much better now. I know. I've drawn these years. So it probably is the halogen tool is my point. But you're in there, if you're a firefighter who showed up on a fire truck, you're messing with the fire to make it easier for the line operators

to get water onto the fire where it's needed. Right. Yes. Exactly. Depending on how advanced your truck or how much dough your municipality has, you might have the jaws of life on your truck, which I thought about, I even looked up that article to see if that was worth doing one on. Well, it may just be 30 minutes of us talking about how the fact that it is a

super powerful hydraulic powered can opener. Okay. So I think it might have been like jackhammers. Okay. No, we'll steer clear of that. Yeah. But the jaws of life everyone knows is that super high powered hydraulic can opener that can cut someone out of a car, which is great.

Exhaust fans, not really thought about that, but there are a couple of types of fans. An exhaust fan is when you would put in an entryway to suck out smoke. They also have positive pressure fans to blow air through and out the other side. And I imagine they can work in concert with one another depending on their placement. Do you remember Greg who was an illustrator for a while too? It's like illustrator day. That worked with us? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. He had a house fire and he said his house was generally fine, but the insurance company was considering totaling his house just because of the smoke damage. It just gets everywhere. And I'm sure it smells like that forever. Yeah, and you can't do anything about it. It's actually really not good for you to live with that as it's dissipating for years and years and years.

I never really thought about that. You always think the structure is damaged and compromised, but the structure can be intact and the smoke can total a house. When I worked as a PA, I did an errand one time for a very, not wealthy, but a pretty rich producer to his condo in Santa Monica, which had to have cost like a couple of million bucks. And I walked in by myself. He wasn't there, he gave me the keys. And it was the stinkiest.

He was a smoke cigarette smoker. And he had been smoking in that place with a window shut for years. And this $2 million suite ocean view condo was the most, it smelled like a bar like the next morning. It was ruined. Ruined. And I just can't imagine like, I mean, do you desensitize used to smoke? It doesn't matter. Does he not notice it or does not care?

No, he doesn't notice it. Interesting. He does not notice it. Maybe if he comes back from a vacation or something, he might be like, oh, it smells a little vaguely smoky. I better get it going again or something. Oh man, it was so stale and gross. It's toast, man. Yeah.

Like for any, if he wants to sell it, you would have to sell it to a smoker because any savvy person who understands the health risks of that is like, this place is done. You would have to pull up the floors, pull out the walls, pull out the ceiling, just strip it to its bones and start over. Some scratch. I just remember thinking like, man, and he had a balcony. It's like, and it's LA. Oh, that is so lazy.

It's so lazy. Yeah. What else do they have? Bolt cutters, sledge hammers, chainsaws, small ladders, you know, you see them running with a ladder over their shoulder like a 10 or 12 footer. Yeah. They still have those little guys. Sure.

And it's all very useful. They basically have everything. A lot of them have EMS equipment or repelling rope. It's just like everything you can think of. Yeah. Basically to save lives. That's why you'll see like a fire truck at the scene of like a heart attack or something like that because the ambulance might actually not have everything they need for a medical

emergency. So they'll send the fire truck out, which seems like a colossal waste of resources and money. But I think something you said earlier might explain it a little bit that they're a little bit bored. Maybe. They're like, oh, heart attack. Let's go. I'm sure it's nothing like that.

Okay. What my hope is from the show that we'll hear from firefighters that are like, you guys got kind of most of it right. And thanks for shining a light on us. It's the best we can hope for. Have you heard of, did you look up these tiller trucks? You know, that like the coolest job is to drive the back of that thing. Like Kramer?

Yeah. Those are called tiller trucks and tiller drivers drive them. And it's a little cockpit, a one person cockpit. I got this from Hot Rod Magazine. And you have to of course take a certification test to make sure you can drive it. And as everyone knows, or maybe you may not know this, but the whole trick to those things is you got to steer the, you got to get it in your head that you steer opposite. So when you're making a right hand turn up front, you've got to turn that wheel left.

I could not do this. I don't have that kind of coordination. It would be tough, huh? Yeah. Could you do it? Yeah. I mean, I think you'd get used to it if that's your job. Sure.

Like you wouldn't want to be like, ah, right again. But when you're driving your car, you just crash into stuff all the time. Maybe. It'd be tough, I think. Like you got to be able to flick that switch in your head. Because, you know, obviously if they're turning right, you're turning that back wheel left. It makes it much more maneuverable.

And apparently they are, as long as they are, if you've got an experienced tiller person back there, they are really super maneuverable on city streets. Well, that's why they exist. Yeah. It's like it's way easier to get a very long truck that's cut into two that can take tight corners rather than one long truck that's one, you know, one long length of truck. Yeah. That's the whole reason they're there.

I never understood that until like yesterday. Yeah. And apparently they really work well in cities especially. And here's a couple of little tricks that I never thought about. There is a light on a rod at the, on top of the front cab. And as that's your, that's there for the tiller driver, tiller stirrer to look at as their center point. Okay.

Like that's how they center their wheels. Oh, gotcha. And if they make a turn, they count, because, you know, you got to straighten back out afterward, they count like two and a half rotations on the wheel for this turn. So two and a half back in the other direction to get straight again. You're actually making me anxious right now. I'm imagining myself having to do this like on the way to a fire on a busy city street. Well, they're usually apparently the first person at the ladder too.

So that is not the job for you tiller driver and ladder guy. I just feel like I quit. Yeah. And it's funny, they, they interviewed and took a, like a course test, the hot rod author and they asked her like, well, what happens if, if you turn it the wrong way and they're like, well, then you're on the curb and you're knocking out cars and people, they're like, it's not good. Pretty cool though.

Yeah. I think they said the, here's another stat. The operating angle for a ladder, normal operating angles about 65 to 70 degrees. And the biggest hassle of the ladders is wiring. Oh, I could, I'll bet. Don't want to think about that. You don't want to get it tangled up. And no, no good, very interesting.

Yeah. You got anything else on fire talks? No, I want to try out tiller truck. I wonder if they let civilians like us just like get out in a big closed down parking line. It probably depends on the level of corruption of the mayor of the town that the fire truck lives in. Well, they let the hot rod magazine guy do it. Oh, he's a journal. Yeah.

That's what I'm saying. Like they cooked it up for like, we could probably cook up a reason, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll be like, we're doing another episode on fire trucks and we need to do this tiller test. Yeah. And they went, don't you mean fire talks? Like you're speaking our language, buddy. If you want to know more about fire talks, go down to your local fire station. Maybe ask them for some chili.

They'll love it. They'll love you. Ask them for a tour. I guarantee you they'll, if they're not busy, they'll say, sure, come on in. And they'll probably give you some chili without asking. Yeah. And since I said chili, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this one on war masks that I was, I thought that was a pretty good episode.

Hot off the presses. Yes, it was a good episode, Chuck. Greetings from Dublin. Hey guys, fairly recent listener. I moved to Ireland from the UK about a year ago and not knowing many people you guys have kept me. Provided a real comfort for me. Nice. I just listened to the episode on war masks, something I already kind of knew about.

I used to work for a publisher specializing in military history. And while I found the glorification of war a bit sickening, it was weirdly interesting to me the effect of injury, mental and physical on the soldiers. We published a book called The Whistler's Room about so-called deformed German soldiers. And she puts that in quotes as if to say, you know, it's not the proper nomenclature. Scared quotes. Yeah. Getting medical treatment at a hospital before heading back out into the wider world.

The men were called whistlers because due to the injury, they could not breathe through their mouths or noses. Instead had holes cut in their throats, which created a whistling noise. The book in turn led me to a film called The Officer's Ward. It's a French film, La Chambre des Offices, based on a novel based on a true story. And following a French military engineer who suffered extreme injury to his face and throat on his first day of action in World War I. And his treatment involved facial trauma and a war mask. The ingenuity, compassion and perseverance showed by the doctors and nurses was apparently very accurate

as were the treatments shown. It is utterly compelling, heartbreaking, and I recommend it 100%. That is from Hannah McAdams. Keep up the cracking work. Nice. Love that. Yeah. So it's called The Officer's Ward, French film.

I'm going to check it out. Yeah, for sure. Or the Chambre des Offices. I think you did it better, Chuck. Good work. Thanks, Hannah. Great name, too. Hannah McAdams kind of rolls off the tongue like a punch.

Yep. If you want to get in touch with us like Hannah McAdams did, you can find us at stuffyoushouldknow.com. All of our social links are there. Or you can send us all an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. Send a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.