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I met Paul and his wife Marie (Paul's personal videographer) at the Tampa Fire Rescue/Hillsborough Community College Fire Academy on Tuesday March 12, 2002. Paul had made arrangements for a demonstration of one of the Tampa Vent Trucks through his son and with the Fire Chief at Tampa International Airport. The airport is part of the Tampa Fire Rescue Department.

At the Training site we were greeted by Firefighter Ike Reeves.

Ike had already set Vent-1 up to vent the four story training tower.

I immediately noticed that there had been some modifications to the unit since our last visit. Specifically there is a new fill station for the air bank system. Also Vent-1 is now the backup unit as Vent-2 has had a new chassis placed under it and is now the primary in-service unit.

Ike has started the fan and has increased the throttle to about 1000 RPM's He is standing in the air path and you can make out that his hair and clothes are blowing. This is about half throttle and Ike estimated that the unit is moving about 30 to 40 thousand cubic feet a minute of air.

We then entered the tower and opened a window on the 4th floor. As with most towers the roof door was damaged and could not be fully closed so much of the air was exiting there, however, as you can see in the next picture the streamers were still flowing straight out.

In the next picture you can see a plastic tank of water. The truck has the ability to inject a mist of water into the air stream. Also note the reel of high pressure hose that is used to supply a portable fill station.

Here Ike is showing us a portable fill station that can be set up two floors below the fire in a high rise operation to fill 2 air bottles at a time saving time and work by not having to return to the outside. The high pressure hose is usually pulled up the outside of the building and into a window to feed the fill station. A great idea.

After the Demo we spent and hour or more talking with Ike. He is a very interesting person and an excellent ambassador for the Tampa Department. He has 16 years on the department but his level of energy is more like an 8 year veteran. We talked about everything from PPV to Incident Command to Training in general and the departments rank structure which is a little different than we are used to in New England.

Their primary career path does not have the rank of Lieutenant in it. The first exam and promotion from firefighter is to Driver Operator and the next is to Captain. All fire Officers on the engine and ladder Companies are Captains. There are no Lieutenants riding the Fire Companies. One cannot test for Captain without becoming a Driver Operator if he chooses that career path.

Tampa operates advanced life support paramedic ambulances called rescue units. (Basic life support is provided by private ambulance service). The rescue units have one driver operator paramedic and one Lieutenant Paramedic assigned to them. Most stations have a rescue unit operating out of it.

A firefighter paramedic can test and be promoted to lieutenant without becoming a driver operator then test and be promoted to Captain.

As Ike put it "that is the only way to become a Captain without becoming a driver first."

Well, I hope you have found this site a little interesting. I will update it as I talk a little more with the members of the department.

These next two pictures show the unit positioned to vent the building.