Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Salisbury Fire Department in the Past


Here is a couple more photos from Salisbury Fire Departments past. Once again I remember the incident but not the date.

I am not sure of the reason for workers being on scaffolding on the old section of "Peninsula General Hospital", but there was a failure of one of the cables used to suspend it. One of the workers on the scaffolding fell about 30 feet when his personal safety equipment did it's job and arrested his fall. This part of the old building was about 5 stories high.

Salisbury Fire Dept responded and Assistant Chief Tony Sterling and Lt. Bill Schneider assended the ladder to free the worker from his harness and assist him to the ground.

Chief Sterling is wearing the dark Shirt and the white helment and Lt Schneider is in the white shirt.

I will try to get a better time frame of when this happened and with any luck possibly a solid date.

The ladder truck used in this rescue was a 1973 American LaFrance
1000 series chassis, with a 100' aerial ladder. The approx. cost of this vehicle new was about $250,000. That was a lot of money in 1973. About equal to $1,000,000 today. Do you suppose the victim of this incident really cared about cost that at this point?



I suppose it's a good thing Albero wasn't around to "watchdog" expenses back then, or this gentleman might still be hanging on the side of the building. No doubt Albero would have insisted the victim put a personal finacial contribution towards the vehicle cost, much the ways he insists only those in need of a fireboat purchase that piece of equipment.

Thanks BC for this series of pics.
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2 comments:

out-of-da-past said...

Hey Joe, I was just shown this picture last night by a friend of ours and he was telling me what an excellent job you're doing with this site. I came back tonight and enjoyed reading some of your other posts. I am impressed with the info you share and how accurate it is in my opinion. I haven't had a computer long and haven't gotten into the blog scene and don't think I want to. I've been in enough pi$$ing contests to last a lifetime and don't care to start again. lol! The point of my post (this is my first) or whatever you call what I'm doing (lol!) is to comment on the picture. I think the victim was George Bert Adams of Adams Crane. He was placing or maybe repairing guddering on the side of the hospital when what I think was like a boatswain's chair cable broke and he fell until his safety strap took up. The guy that made that operation successful that day was Josh Thompson, the ATO. It was textbook perfect! As he started extending the ladder, the victim began trashing around in an attempt to kick his body out to reach it. We all know the consequences of these actions and F/F Thompson elevated and rotated out of any possible reach until the correct length was achieved and then lowered and rotated in for the pickup. It was perfect and possibly saved this man's life. Keep up the good work and I hope to see you around some day soon. btw / how bout that Billy Carey?! He's come a long way hasn't he?! He's got it going on!

Soapbox said...

Thank you for the comments!

However it would have been nice if you had signed your name! Maybe then I could know who you are. LOL