 |
 |
|
|
|
|
When I went to Dallas, TX on a business trip in 1998, I couldn't resist the temptation to visit one of their busiest fire stations downtown. If I hadn't been obligated to get up early the next morning and be coherent for the training class that my company was paying for me to attend, I would have taken the crew up on their offer to let me stay up with them running calls all night long! They said that during a typical 24-hour shift, they could run as many as 30!
Although I couldn't stay all night, I did get to run a medical call with them. It was quite a hair-raising ride through city traffic, for those of us that aren't used to those kinds of crowds. When we arrived, I was amazed to see a whole squadron of law enforcement officers present, along with all walks of life who were patrons at a nearby bar. The incident turned out to be just a typical gang fight, and of course no one wanted to go to the hospital.
Their incident dispatches come over terminals mounted in each of their trucks. All standard communications such as checking enroute, on-scene, etc. is done by pushing buttons instead of talking over the radio.
I also happened across the Dallas Firefighters Museum in the Old No. 5 Hook and Ladder Station. They have on display all kinds of ancient equipment, from their first horse-driven apparatus to pompier ladders to amazingly well-preserved station logs from nearly a century ago. I spent an entire afternoon there, and could have stayed another week! It is obvious that a lot of time and effort has been put into setting up the museum, and I thoroughly enjoyed my visit!
As of my visit in 1998, the Dallas Fire Department has 55 stations and over 1609 paid firefighters. They protect a 380 square mile district with a population of 1,049,000. In 1994-5, they ran 90,000+ fire calls and 122,000 EMS calls.