Light rescue pumping appliance (LRP)

Welcome to Torquay fire station. As you can see we've got a number of different fire appliances on the station which we use for different types of incidents we may attend. However, today we thought we'd show you this one. This is our light rescue pump.

So here it is, the light rescue pump based here at Torquay. Now the thing to remember about a fire engine is, it's basically just a toolbox on wheels. It carries lots of different tools for the lots of different jobs that we might have to go to. 
On the top is a 105 ladder which basically means it's a ladder which can go to 10 and a half meters high. It also carries 1,000 litres of water. Let's have another look at that ladder and see how it's actually got to work.

One of the most important bits of equipment we have as firefighters is our breathing apparatus. This enables us to be able to go into toxic atmospheres like house fires and safely work to be able to get people out. Obviously, we need to be able to put our breathing apparatus on very quickly.

So here we have our breathing apparatus set. Jason is now wearing on his back a cylinder which is full of air. If you can imagine lots of air squeezed down and placed into this cylinder and put on his back and it's fed through the tube into his breathing mask. This means that if he was in an atmosphere which was full of smoke, he would be able to breathe because he's not breathing in the same air as what's in the room. He's breathing the air which is kept in the cylinder on his back. 
He's also got a torch because it's going to be very dark inside and he's going to be able to try and see what he's doing. He also has a torch on his helmet as well. 
He's got a line which clips onto somebody in front of him so he can go in with a partner, and he's also got some clippers which means if he gets trapped inside a building with some cables or anything which might have come down from the ceiling, he can clip his way and cut the cables so he can safely get himself out.

As we've already mentioned we don't just go to house fires. We also go to floodings, we go to animal rescues, and we also go to car crashes which we call RTC's.

Now if we go to a car crash we come to this locker. In this locker, you'll find a first aid kit which we use if we have to provide any first aid on scene. We also have some lights so if it's at night time we can light up the area so everybody can work safely. And in this tray, we have a standard toolbox and we also have a ram. The ram is designed for pushing two bits of metal apart.

Now on this tray, you've got your cutters you can cut through steering columns and they can cut through A-posts which are the posts on the side of cars.

You've also got your spreaders, now you might have heard of these being called something like the jaws of life. These are designed to get into a small gap between two bits of metal and prise them apart.

So there you go, you've now seen just some of the equipment that we carry on our light rescue pump, our fire engine here at Torquay.