5-alarm Task Force!

Looking back over the last several months, there have been several firefighters, EMS workers, LEO’s and recovery personnel, who have lost their lives on the scene of an emergency, on active roadways. Sadly, this is nothing new. As the number of distracted and/or drivers under the influence have increased, so have the numbers of deaths and injuries to emergency and recovery workers. This issue hit very close to home for Chief Victor Conley and the members of the Irving TX Fire Department, when one of their ladder trucks that was blocking an emergency scene, was hit by a fully-loaded tractor-trailer, throwing three firefighters in all directions and totaling a million-dollar tiller. Luckily, all three survived, but this incident was the proverbial, “straw that broke the camel’s back.” Chief Conley never wanted to see this occur again and set to work, together with the City of Irving, to create a new program that would use retired apparatus to be the “official” blocker vehicle at these types of emergencies.