A friend of mine was an inspecting officer with the New York Fire department in Manhattan. He told me of incident where a large expensive ATV was parked obstructing a fire hydrant. Members of an engine company, who were trying to make into the hydrant, couldn’t get around the car so they broke both the off side and nearside front windows of the ATV and passed a charged hose through the car to supply their pumper.
But NY Ffs are not unique when it comes to being bloody minded. Back in the late seventy’s members of a works fire brigade in Hertfordshire complained to site management about members of staff parking on top of the site fire hydrants. The crew were then told that they, along with other blue collar staff, were no longer allowed to park on site as there weren’t sufficient park spaces.
A few weeks later the WFB responded to an alarm only to find the site managers car parked on the nearest hydrant. A former crew member of long standing just happened to be working nearby using a large freight lifter (V. Big fork lift truck) He promptly picked up the car and placed it lengthways across a gateway with less than a couple of inches between bumpers and gate posts.
When the manager returned to his car and could not get it out of it’s very tight parking spot he accused the crew of dragging it into place, which they of course denied. The former crew member/fork truck driver sympathised with the manager and implied that young modern day crew members had no respect for authority. He then offered to lift the car out of its predicament with the freight lifter, but explained that doing so would probably damage the exhaust. Which it did. Nevertheless the site manager gave him a fiver tip for his trouble and being so helpful. Happy days.
