
Why the San Francisco Fire Dept manufactures their own wooden ladders (video) - brown9-2
http://devour.com/video/ladder-shop/
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bradgessler

        "The San Francisco Fire Department has been "green" since before it was a fad"
    

I fail to see how making your own ladders is "green". Is the carbon footprint
of employing two guys that maintain ladders, heating a shop, etc more-so then
that of a company that can manufacture ladders at a larger scale? etc?

I live across the bay from SF, but if I was a resident of San Francisco, I
would seriously consider this an inefficient use of public funds unless they
had data to prove that wood ladders are economically superior to fiberglass
ladders.

~~~
d2viant
They mention that their data actually admits the opposite, that they're less
economical, costing about $100/foot. They don't mention what the alternative
ladders cost, but it sounds like their argument is because wood ladders gain
them advantages that others don't: nonconductive material, heavier weight
against winds, etc.

~~~
anthonyb
According to the video they're $100/foot, but last a long time.

Update: check starpilot's link here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1854136>, which has a lot more
information on the reasoning behind the use of wood.

~~~
electromagnetic
I work on decade old aluminum ladders on a daily basis, I fail to see how
wooden ladders last longer under regular conditions.

An aluminum ladder conducts electricity, but also conducts heat. I let a
ladder on a black shingle roof one day in the middle of summer and I had to
get gloves to hold it long enough to literally throw it off the roof.

> "You don't want to use a 50-foot lightweight aluminum ladder in heavy winds
> -- it's too dangerous," Cohane said.

Can and do, but fixing the feet and using tie-offs isn't exactly practical for
firefighters.

> The largest ladder they make is 50 feet, weighs 350 pounds and takes six
> firefighters to lift.

Compare this to the largest ladder we use, which is IIRC 40 feet and is easily
moved by one man if done properly (we've had guys fall with them before).

------
baguasquirrel
I don't know how well this is going to be accepted here, but I marveled at the
cultural value of making and using your own wooden ladders in this day and
age. In our practical, efficiency-obsessed style of doing things, people
generally don't care about these details anymore. But those ladders are
beautiful. I wished someone had pointed that out, because I'd never noticed it
in SF.

~~~
jmtulloss
But in a city that can't keep its budget priorities in line, this seems like
another instance of a lot of money without any real data that the money
produces better results.

~~~
baguasquirrel
I'm close to people who work in the public sector, and this sort of thing is
not where the real waste is. This is two or three guys in a shop somewhere. At
least they're making stuff. You know that Despair.com catchphrase, "None of us
is as dumb as all of us?" Well it's like that. You need some serious mass
before you can start moving money and influence. Real waste comes from
political graft.

Imagine a whole branch of a municipality where more than half the people are
managers sitting around and _doing nothing_. They're all making upwards of
100k, and they're all covering each other's asses. Their propaganda machine is
bigger than yours. Now before all you Republicans and Libertarians get all
smart-ass, I should add that it happens plenty often in the military-
industrial complex too with the contractors who do the majority of the real
work. Same stories, different people.

~~~
Empact
> Now before all you Republicans and Libertarians get all smart-ass, I should
> add that it happens plenty often in the military-industrial complex too with
> the contractors who do the majority of the real work.

Funny that you mention Libertarians when they're hardly defenders of the
military-industrial complex.

------
jasonkester
Yikes! Auto-playing video!

Kindly put a warning in the title when you post videos. Especially when they

    
    
      a. play automatically
      b. don't have any actual article accompanying them

~~~
starpilot
SFGate article on why they use wood ladders (2007):
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-06-25/bay-
area/17249021_1_wo...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-06-25/bay-
area/17249021_1_wooden-ladders-aluminum-or-fiberglass-san-francisco-s-fire-
shop)

They said sales of wooden ladders doubled in the 5 years prior to when the
article was written.

------
iuguy
I didn't spot where it said why the SFFD themselves manufacture the ladders
(as opposed to buying them from somewhere). Should it really be the job of the
SFFD to build ladders from raw materials?

~~~
silvestrov
I think it's the only method to ensure that all the ladders are of perfect
quality. If you outsource the production to the lowest-bidder, then you get
lowest-bidder quality.

It's a way different thing to build a ladder that your colleagues (and
friends) are going to climb, than to build something on an constantly more
restrained time schedule for somebody you don't even know the name of. The
latter encourages shortcuts, the former encourages avoiding them.

~~~
joezydeco
I wonder what it does to workmens-comp and liability insurance when you build
the equipment your employees use as opposed to something bought from a vendor.

When a ladder breaks and a firefighter breaks a leg, the department can't
really sue itself, can it?

~~~
britta
The video says that nobody has been injured on these wooden ladders - nobody
has fallen off. It's implied that none of them have broken in action. Probably
worth it to them.

------
sbierwagen
Amazing. An old tradition that has completely failed to change in response to
new technology.

You wouldn't want to use an aluminum ladder near power lines, of course. So
how about fiberglass ladders? After searching on "firefighter fiberglass
ladder" you get <http://www.fireladder.com/fiberglass.html>

There's no 50 foot model, like the one talked about in the video, but there's
a 40 foot version. Costs half as much, and weighs half as much. It's non-
conductive, and most importantly, it's made by a civilian contractor, so you
don't have to run your _own ladder building shop._

~~~
msbarnett
> Costs half as much, and weighs half as much.

In a high-wind city like San Francisco, being too light is a bug, not a
feature.

------
brudgers
Wood is not just a poor electrical conductor, it's also a poor conductor of
heat. That means that a wood ladder resting on a wood building will not become
hot enough to ignite the structure on which it is resting.

------
guynamedloren
Do they burn...?

~~~
pinaceae
wood is far more safer when exposed to heat than metal. while wood starts to
burn on the outside it turns into coal, which effectively seals the remaining
wood core from oxygen - preventing (for a while) further structural loss. this
is taken into consideration when sizing wooden structures in buildings.

metal on the other hand loses structural integrity when exposed to heat
shockingly fast. the wtc towers showcased this effect quite publicly.

experienced firefighters prefer to deal with fire in wooden structures than in
metal ones. they can predict how long a wooden roof structure will take till
collapse quite well, while a metal structure is a nightmare.

so, flammability and structural integrity under heat are two different things.
non-intuitive for most non-engineers, hence the retarded wtc discussions.

in SF's case they use wood because of its function as an isolator.

~~~
MichaelApproved
>>metal on the other hand loses structural integrity when exposed to heat
shockingly fast. the wtc towers showcased this effect quite publicly.

but isn't that at extremely high temperature? Wouldn't that same amount of
heat burn wood far faster than it would damage metal?

The wtc towers were exposed to jet fuel and beaten by a jetliner slamming into
the building. Also, the metal beams in the wtc towers were made of steel while
ladders are made of aluminum.

~~~
sokoloff
Aluminum (in most alloys) loses significant strength in the 400-500*F range.
By 600F, Al alloys are very weak.

<http://www.burnsstainless.com/yieldstrength.aspx>

~~~
baguasquirrel
Aluminium also melts before it glows red from being hot. It's why it's
relatively difficult to weld, and why there were a lot of failures in early
aluminum-frame bikes.

