Fire appliance

A firefighting apparatus describes any vehicle that has been customized for use during firefighting operations. These vehicles are highly customized depending on their needs and the duty they will be performing. These duties can include firefighting, vehicle extrication, dangerous goods investigations, urban search and rescue, medical emergency, swift water rescue and plane crashes.

While fire engine red remains the most common color for firefighting apparatus, it is not required. For example, the Chicago Fire Department has a long-standing tradition of painting their apparatus black over red. Neighboring departments will also often use different colors to distinguish their apparatus. For example, the Santa Barbara Fire Department uses the traditional fire engine red while the neighboring Santa Barbara County Fire Department elects to use blue over white.

A study by the American Psychological Association published in February 2014 indicated that lime-yellow is a significantly safer color for emergency vehicles because of its increased visibility. The study showed that lime-yellow fire apparatus were half as likely to be involved in accidents as red vehicles.

An early device used to squirt water onto a fire is a squirt or fire syringe. Hand squirts and hand pumps are noted before Ctesibius of Alexandria invented the first fire pump around the 2nd century B.C., and an example of a force-pump possibly used for a fire-engine is mentioned by Heron of Alexandria. The fire pump was reinvented in Europe during the 16th century, reportedly used in Augsburg in 1518 and Nuremberg in 1657. A book of 1655 inventions mentions a steam engine (called a fire engine) pump used to "raise a column of water 40 feet [12 m]", but there was no mention of whether it was portable.

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