Fire Engines Photos

John:

I first visited the York fire station shortly after the Minster fire, when they had three pumps, two turntable ladders and a fully fledged emergency tender nicely filling up its six bays. I was told that the second ladder was specifically there because the Minster fire very nearly got away from them before the second due one was able to get there!

They were an odd collection of colors at various times over the years, but still quite an impressive line-up...

I always wondered if these ended up dispersed to other stations, were jump-manned or did the brigade simply reduce the numbers of firefighters on watch?

Added by Rob Johnson on 23 December 2017.

John nice shot

Added by Les Davis on 05 January 2018.

Rob, York has had various appliance line up's over the years. There used to be 3 Pumps, 2 Wholetime crewed and the third was retained, they also had an Emergency Tender crewed by wholetime firefighters and 2 Aerial appliances. They also had a prime mover which carried a mobile control unit but also had a feeding unit, flat back general purpose body. After a few changes the station had 2 pumps wholetime, an Emergency Tender and Turntable ladder. The Emergency Tender was moved to another station, the Turntable was replaced with a Bronto Platform and a RIB boat was put on the station due to City having two rivers flowing through It. The station then got a second RIB, which was permanently moored on the river to the rear of the station the other boat towed by a Land Rover covered the County attending water related Incidents. In April 2014 the station in Clifford Street was closed and moved to a new 3 bay station housing 1 Pump and Land Rover Water Rescue Unit. The second Pump and ALP was moved to another station on the outskirts of York. There are 7 personnel on 4 watches of wholetime firefighters on the new station. I hope this may be of Interest.

Added by Paul Warnock on 06 January 2018.

Paul:

Thanks, I only just realized today that you had posted these interesting comments on how fire protection has evolved in York. It seems that a number of cities in the UK are splitting their resources like this, rather than concentrating everything in one central location, and I can see the sense of it.

This new approach is a bit more like the way we do things here in the US, while a lot of European cities still seem to be sticking with limited numbers of often quite large fire stations, usually with lots of personnel and appliances.

For example, now I live in Chicago, which is about the same size as Greater Manchester, and we have 97 fire stations compared to their 41, but most of ours have only two to four appliances.

Added by Rob Johnson on 18 February 2018.

Rob, most of Manchester's stations have only one or two appliances. And it's the same all over the country. What's happening to many UK brigades is absolutely scandalous. Sure, I accept that, economically, this country is on its knees, due in equal part to the global depression and to the labour government's disgraceful handling of our finances, almost bankrupting the country in the process. But the ensuing austerity has seen the subsequent government really putting the squeeze on every public service in the land, services that, in my opinion, should never be meddled with. The NHS, schools, the police and fire services have all been forced into trying to operate an ever-demanding service with grotesquely slashed budgets. Fire stations have closed, machines removed, firefighters' jobs lost, and millions of people's lives de-valued. It's hardly progress!

Added by Yelp Bullhorn on 23 February 2018.

Chicago has also seen quite a few fire station closures, and the number of fire companies has fallen over the years, but I think a lot of these were replaced by newer ones and several were relocations.

For many years, we had numerous nineteenth century single bay fire houses which were built for horse drawn equipment - and close enough together so the horses could get the equipment to incidents as fast as possible without becoming exhausted!

When the fleet became all motor trucks, around 1920, this concern disappeared, but we do still have quite a few really ancient fire stations.

Other US cities like New York, San Francisco and Boston have even more....

The oldest one in Chicago dates from 1874, Boston has one from 1886 and FDNY turns out from one built in 1864!

Added by Rob Johnson on 01 March 2018.

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