History of The American Fire Service
Many people think that the fire service has been around since the beginning of time and everything has been run as smoothly as it is today. I’m here to tell you this is not true. Some citizens think that people back in the day just let fires burn until they “put themselves out.” The old rumor of fires putting themselves out isn’t true what so ever.
The first fire “department” can be traced back to early Roman times. Now, I say department very loosely because this group of people used to watch and help put out fires were slaves. This group of people were called “watchmen”, and whenever a fire would happen, they would sound an alarm and begin to assemble a line. The line would be used to rush buckets of water to the fire to be thrown on. The firefighters soon found out this technique had a glitch that when the bucket reached the fire, it was almost empty.
In the video above shows you the history of how the Fire Department came to be. It shows how the fire apparatus has changed over the years, and how important that is. Whenever the “stations” would get a call, they would have to take their horses (who didn’t always cooperate)-strap them to their make shift engines, and then get to the call. As you can imagine this made time very slow and by the time they would get to the fire, the home or building would be a total loss.
Of course as technology progressed vehicles were beginning to come into production. Thomas Lote was credited for building the first fire engine in America in 1743. With these engines being built, they needed pumps or something on them to help pump/circulate the water to the hoses. The first steam propelled engine was built in 1841 in NYC. But the firefighters didn’t like it because it was unsafe and burned them so it was discontinued. Twelve years later in 1853 Alexander Bonner Latta invented the first practical steam fire engine which was tested in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Back in the early days of fire fighting, all of the stations were volunteer. Being a volunteer meant that you were unpaid, or if you were lucky paid a little, and you showed up at the fire house whenever you were needed. Of course with technology not as advanced as now, they didn’t have pagers or apps on their phones to tell them when they needed to rush to the station for a call. So most volunteers were living at the stations until they were needed. The fire station in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1853 decided to become the first paid fire department in the United States.
As technology advanced and more trucks were being made, of course the trucks now days are way bigger and more elaborate. The truck to the left is colored in a yellow color, now many people ask, shouldn’t it be red? Or why are fire trucks red? There are many theories on why the trucks are painted red. The biggest one is back when fire departments were first getting established and all volunteer, red was the cheapest color of paint to get, so that is why they are red. Also red is easy to see as it is a bright color. Now when it comes to the high vision yellow trucks, people argue that they are easy to see at night. There are departments who use yellow apparatus’s but most stations are red.
