Day 29, April 10, 2009

Dallas fire buff Bob Knowles picked me up around 0800 hours after he had finished his shift at the hospital emergency room. Bob was the designated driver today (a nice change for me) and we had breakfast at a very good restaurant right across the street from Historic DFD Fire Station 11, Dallas oldest operating station. Bob brought along some photo albums of fire apparatus and I took one into the restaurant to look at while we were waiting for our food. As we were leaving the restaurant Engine 11 and Medic 11 got an EMS run (Engine 11 must have been cancelled as they returned a few minutes later (I got a photo).

We headed to DFD Station 1 to see their Mobile Command unit and also took photos of Engine 1’s reserve pumper. We headed to the DFD shops and met the man in charge (the foreman, a friend of Bob’s, was off). Dallas has 10 engines on order from Crimson, three rear-mount ladders trucks and one rear-mount tower (they’re done buying TDA’s I was told). Their experiment with buying heavier duty IHC chassis for their ambulances has also ended (they are sticking with the Ford F-350 chassis).

DFD Lieutenant Ronnie Tocci, currently an EMS supervisor, was on duty and met us while we were at the shops. We got photos of quite a number of rigs (some in service, some reserve pieces) at the shops. Ronnie pulled one of the new ambulances around for photos. We spent almost two hours at the shops. The shops does not have a roster of their fire rigs with the years, makes/manufacturers, pump capacity or manufacturer serial numbers. That was disappointing to hear.

Ronnie said he’d try and catch up with is later in the afternoon, but he had to leave as the department was putting five new Paramedic Assessment Engines into service for the first time today. He must have gotten tied up, as we never heard back from him.We headed from the shops to the Dallas Fire Museum. I’d been there before a number of years ago and had taken a number of photos at the time. Not much has changed since I was here last. We met a very nice retired DFD firefighter (37 years on the job) who showed us around. He wouldn’t take any money from us for entry fees, so I put money in their donation box. We headed to DFD Station 15 to see their USAR unit and also got photos of Truck 15 when they got a run. We were headed to Station 23 to get a photo of one of their six TDA’s, but Bob called ahead an no one answered the phone.

Our next stop was a deadhead across the city to DFD Station 39. We stopped at Mequite Station 2 on the way there and took photos of Truck 2 and one of their two brand new engines (Engine 2). We also went by Mesquite Station 1 and got photos of the other new engine and Truck 1. They pulled out the TDA for us when we arrived at Dallas Station 39, one of the newer stations in the DFD. We also stopped at DFD Station 57 and got photos of Engine 57 and Truck 57’s TDA. Our last stop was at DFD Station 27 where Engine 42 is also quartered while their new station is built near Dallas Love Airport. We got photos of Engine 27 and Engine 42, two of the newest orders of pumpers in the DFD fleet

We had dinner on the way back to the motel and I got to look through another of Bob’s great fire truck photo albums. We finally finished dinner around 1830 hours and Bob went home for a good nights sleep after being up for 27 straight hours. All of the Dallas firefighters we ran into today were very friendly and helpful. Because of his job in the hospital emergency room, Bob knew a lot of the firefighters we came into contact with today.

Bob and I had a great time today discussing our fire-related interests and shooting rigs. It’s hard to believe how fast the day went by today. It was sunny and around 70 degrees here with a light breeze most of the day. We were both pretty red and tired out from being out in the sun for so long today, especially when we were at the DFD shops.

Tomorrow, Ronnie will be joining us as we hit some of the Dallas suburban stations and maybe DFW Airport (they have five stations).