Hose Tower!

Second day shift today. We organised a visit to a CFA (Country Fire Authority, we are the Metropolitan Fire Brigade) station today. They are a seperate Fire Service that covers country areas, whereas we cover metro areas. There are areas on our boudaries that we both turn out to together. The CFA have different ways of running their stations and how they 'man' their trucks. We have to have enough fire fighters rostered on to fill the seats in the truck, while the CFA has less permanant people rostered on and volunteers make up the rest of their numbers.

It was interesting to see their trucks and learn about how they run their stations. We also had lunch there all together! Steak, chips and salad!

I went looking for a blip at their station and found the hose tower. It is a four or five story tower that has an area where you can hang up the wet canvas hose to dry. It has to be tall as the canvas hose is quite long! I was standing underneath the tower looking up towards the top at the hose dangling down to take this shot! The dark circles at the bottom are the couplings that connect together, or to the hydrant! It is open to the air on the sides so there was enough light coming in!