These are hoses waiting to be tested.

The hoses are laid out straight and hooked up to a machine. It fills them with water, and then measures the pressure. Hoses have different pressures they are rated for. These particular hoses will have 400 pounds of pressure. When they fight fires, they will not use near that much pressure – they will only use 125 to 150 pounds of pressure, because if it’s higher than that, the firefighter will not be able to control the hose.

Some hoses are rolled up afterwards, and some are folded carefully right on the engine ready for use. That box they are folding the hose into goes onto the engine.

The ladders have to be tested too. Nobody wants to climb a ladder, in full turnout gear, carrying a charged hose, and have it fail. The ladders are subjected to 500 pounds of pressure, which is carefully measured with gauges.

The engines have to be kept full of water and fuel, so they are ready at all times to go on a fire if necessary. This is engine 2 getting filled with water. This is a fairly small engine and “only” holds 750 gallons of water. That’s 6,000 pounds, or three tons. The bigger engines hold 1,200 gallons, which is 9,600 pounds. That’s a lot of mass… never pull out in front of a fire engine! They have a hard time stopping suddenly.

A close up of the control panel on engine 2. Fire engines have a lot of knobs on them…

Back at the station, all done with hose testing for another year.