Fire Department Shows Schools How To Stop Shooters Using Only Fire Hose
If you’re 40 and younger, recycling is probably a moral tenet for you. Everything from PSAs to school posters to Saturday morning cartoons has emphasized its importance.
I guess that’s why I find myself dutifully sifting what was once considered trash. Sometimes, though, as I’m washing out old ketchup bottles and tin cans, I find myself wondering if it really does any good.
Well, there’s one kind of recycling that leaves no doubt as to whether or not it helps. Interestingly enough, though, it starts in fire departments rather than households.
The idea starts with a very simple premise: Fire departments have fire hoses that have to meet certain inspection requirements.
But when hoses don’t pass, they typically get thrown away. However, they still retain some of their characteristics — including their toughness.
No one is entirely sure where the idea started, but according to KTVK, a teacher in Kansas came up with a use for that old hose. When snipped into convenient lengths and placed over a door hinge, it makes it almost impossible to breach a classroom.
Why would an educator need to worry about that? Two sad words: school shootings.
“Anytime you see something like that pop up on the news, it is heartbreaking and wrenching,” Darin French of the Mayfield Fire Department in Mayfield, Kentucky, told WPSD. So French decided to do something about it.
Hoses are assembled out of 50-foot lengths, so French had one double-jacketed hose sectioned and delivered to Graves County High School. A piece will be kept in each classroom in case of a lockdown.
“We’re service providers, so that’s what we do,” French said. “And any way we can help out, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Rural Kentucky isn’t the only place where schools have stared implementing the unique security device. Schools in Tuscon, Arizona, have as well.
In an impressive show of cross-agency cooperation, the Rural Metro Fire Department has reached out to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the Sahuarita Police Department. Fire Department Battalion Chief John Walka explained to KVOA that fire stations have a lot of one thing: old hoses.
“We’re using a decommissioned fire hose,” he said. “This is fire hose that failed a service test.
“We service test our fire hose annually. This fire hose right now is very sturdy.
“It’s got an inner rubber jacket and it’s got two layers of an outer jacket. So it’s pretty much indestructible as far as what we are going to be using it for.”
Hopefully the schools involved will never need to use these devices. But if they do, they can thank the forward thinking of some innovative fire fighters for saving lives.
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