welcome to this edition of city connections today we are going to talk with captain chris turney who is our firefighter of the year for two thousand and fourteen we're going to go to ben royalty farm and slide down that wonderful hill that happens in the wintertime in holland but right now we are at the transportation center for the city of holland those brave souls that are out there fighting against snow ice and sleet and everything else that's happened this winter and we're here with barry west sink to help us meet  newest addition in the equipment world and that is the wing the plow truck which in is amazing contraption so we're glad to have barry here to help us with what is this new huge truck that we've never had in holland before and we has a wing and it's what what is different about this truck from all the other trucks that we've ever had very first of all this truck is approximately twenty three twenty four thousand pounds heavier  we can haul substantial more weight in cargo with it we also have a larger underbody it's two foot larger than what we have presently though besides a nine foot wing that says to the side so we're able to move practically twice as much snow with the same than what we can now so so when you're going down the street there are plow things happening and underneath that we can't see that it's correct and then there's this big orange thing out to the side that we hopefully can see if this is that night how do we know that we have this big orange thing hanging out to the side on the backside of the back corner you'll see a black box what there is was a stroll bugs a light in there so when traffic is coming behind they can see that that light is very bright in effect of that they know there's something top of the cab ok on top of the rough there there is a laser that shines out approximately sixty foot out in front of the truck and will shoot approximately six and a half foot out to the side and a few can see this yellow line that's on the floor ok this edge of this plow will be running along that yellow line the laser line will be out there so if there's a mailbox or a parked car or a stray obstruction in the road ahead driver know was where the edge of this plow was as he's driving down the road things that new with this that's been added i would say six eight years ago it's becoming very popular it really helps a driver to be more safe as he's going down the road so yeah so now some people are probably thinking wow the streets seem like they're getting even more narrow with snow and everything hi alina is does this why have a truck with oh we work on every street or is this just for some streets or it will work on most street anything that's more than three lanes wide you're much more efficient on the streets but otherwise typically the waverley michigan avenue anything three four five lanes you can move much more efficiently on the streets with a white cloth ok so know this costs a little more than your regular truck yes yes and it's the first time we buy one so how long does it take for us to get the money back from buying a truck like this is opposed to a regular you think right off the tough in my head look at the calculate that all but we've done a lot of talking in the past year about what that is yeah my personal feeling is that you're going to be back within four or five years we're already had at that really typically we keep  truck up to fourteen years so there's a big payoff on that fuel cost is huge yeah you start running one truck instead of two trucks your fuel cost is substantial you're averaging two to three miles to the gallon with these trucks anyway  man hours and man overtime probably maintenance on a truck to maintaining one larger truck it isn't a whole lot more to maintain a bigger truck that a smaller one yeah so right now what about full capacity does this hol on the road have you and anybody few times a few times already just to test a few things out here and there so ok we've done a lot of upgrades and how the truck has put together a lot of upgrades between hydraulic system is more efficient than what we had before  it's quite a bit more so we should be cutting back probably two to three percent less fuel right off the bat with that graham there's been so many upgrades that we could stand here all day but we don't have all that you know well that's great it's great to have mechanics fight here to keep everything working and i know mechanics is on the now and helping us with plowing snow as well as the parks and cemetery p s a and everyone that knows how to drive a huge truck and can do it safely has been out there wri a lot of days a lot of hours yeah and i asked you what time you started today that was two am their anger wrecked yes which is not unusual that's quite often we do that in the last five weeks has been a lot so yeah so barry when exactly did this truck come in and i know we voted on it a while ago but when was it delivered the truck which is just the cabin chassis itself basically the cab the frame of the truck came in the bolt the second we can all go we've got it so i mean this is like a swing set delivery with all the pieces and then years to put stuff together didn't come like a truck like already to go and he drove it in a minute thousand pieces really we do all the trucks that we have at the city of how we built from scratch and start over start with cabin chassis we fabricate everything that we need to do some components we buy we fit everything up it's all done in house here we've got a great team of guys that love to do that kind of stuff we've been doing it for years now it's a big loss cost savings to the city is phenomenal there's not that many places that do that so yeah why don't you go to soon your delivery to they only have to send you pieces and they don't have to put it together correct but what's the wait time otherwise wait time for some of the stuff now you can wait up to six months to have the stuff on a waiting list just to get it put together and by that time look at midsummer big deal and you get a little sticker inspected by the queue or whatever but now you guys have than the ones that have been in there seen all the parts you and others we incorporate all these ideals have come up with the best possible fit what's going to hold up the best the longest and we do it from there so would design by committee can be a good thing yes everybody at the meeting has experience right we have it we have to fix it later so now i don't want to break so we try to really hard to build that correctly up from when i first heard you know here we had this huge snowstorm and the new wing ploughs still has to get a few things done sprayed or whatever and like how long does it take to spray that thing not knowing you guys assembled the entire thanks correct and made it as a rock while you know the paint work everything it's all done in house here so wow so then you know it's your lives on the line drive in it and you're going to make sure every bolt is right every piece is right and right every problem is anticipated that you can and then you avoid the problems that other places ha it it helps us in the long run otherwise you have an issue you're not sure where they ran a wire harness you done it yourself you know or a problem could be you know what's got to be done it's faster fix faster turnaround yeah and you really want to do a good job up front so it doesn't come back that's right so we save time money and everything right with this and safety number one right well so i think there's a long line of guys that want to be driving this the new truck and i know everybody i to get a new vehicle and so i go home so it's the new fun kind of thing to drive although it does involve some training probably not the same as the other trucks it is it is close except for a couple items but was going volved some train getting used to something much wider up on the side yeah diskette are the biggest thing as cars on your side you gotta watch more it takes more time yeah it's something that you don't want to go forty miles an hour and fly with i mean you've got driver one person that kind of owns it and then other people that also drive it so it's not only one person and it gets used as much as possible right typically it would be put to one driver themselves you know that that drivers are not here  reason or another or vacation or something and we want this truck to be out every day every day so we want a number of other peoples that can jump right into it so beery here i am in the driver's seat which is kind of freaky cars trucks aren't my thing but i know where the key goes and i know where the brake and accelerator is but there's a whole bunch of the things going on here what what do you do when you get in here how do you do this well the first saying this whole truck is designed around a large hydraulic system everything runs off hydraulic  what we do is we have a hydraulic pump on off an override every truck is located or has a system set up if we have a major hydraulic leak on the truck there's a float system in the tank that will sense hey we're low on oil will shut the system down so we're not pumping it all over the road and the driver is able to hit it override safety system and get back to the shop here so we can correct it second of all a hydraulic controls they all work with air pressure over hydraulic your first one is going to be blade up on thousands and thousands uls scrapes very well the second one is going to be your way forward is down the back it's going to be up it's a very fast reaction way when you're coming along the street and you're trying to roll the banks back and you get to a street sign or something like that you want to build a pull back and you want it out just like that so you don't hit that sign and drop it right back down third one is going to be your front plow front plow there's a big twelve foot plow on the front that's up and down with that and then after that you're going to have an under body scrape or you're under body plow is able to turn left and turn right both if it's a one way street you're going to turn out one way if it's a right hand street you'll turn into the right and throw it out the right side and the last one is a safety lock get on the back so it can slide help back into winter maintenance we have another switch here it's called a pretty wet switch and there is a capacity of one hundred fifty gallons worth of tank on the side of the salt for calcium  different environmental friendly type juices you can use for that if it activates with the salt makes the salt work quicker and faster it helps a lot more when it's cold the colder it is salt doesn't work for a bit under fifteen degrees and you're fifteen right so you you would on the salt it does a much better job on the road to melt very quickly this portion here this runs the salt box in the back it controls the spinner how fast the spinner turns to how far it's going to spread out it also has a dog or conveyor how fast the material was from the front of the box to the back of the box so when you have full control of how much you want to come out more or less this next unit is the laser control the laser control which we get a little warm up for a couple minutes will be a big green dot which will be i think we talked about earlier that would be six foot oh yeah you would line that dot up on the curb beds or just inside of a mailbox or a parked car that way you're guaranteed when you go past that your wing is not going to make contact with them that's those controls this one here is a tarp control on the back there is the cut and tarp that would come all the way over the top to cover your load like if you're hauling leaves and it's yeah legally you have to have a tarp to load at all times in the state of michigan so that controls that up and back the next four functions here you get a top light you get side strobe lights we have l e d blade lights on the side and a wing control  trucks all there like that but not in the city yet yeah yeah wow that's pretty much the control issue here there are a lot of things to do besides driving you have constantly paying attention to what's going on around you he have there's a lot going on yeah not to mention all the variables and outside as you're going along as the snow is coming over the front plow and it's very hard to see how this is all over the country it's hard to see when it's windy right know you light some places and we've got guys that are very very talented and b fold their i mean there's conditions that are very hard on your job is to get the road done it's got to get done yeah well we're very thankful for all the training and all that experience this is an amazing inside look i would never have expected all these kind of controls but it makes sense yeah wow so thank you barry that's really interesting to be right in the cab now let's adventure outside in the winter wonderland that's holland michigan at van royalty farm where there's sledding available for the public every day of the week i know this is not your usual enjoyable experience oh no no not at all you are the guys saving other people and that necessarily talking about it so we're really glad that you're  willing to just take a few minutes to let us a behind the scenes and to what is it to be a firefighter in today's world how did you get into this kind of work when you're like that kid that was always playing i don't know of there's a lot of footage of my me and my sister run around the back yard with a garden hose but you know it was something in my family you know i talk about my father in the past he was a firefighter i also have a number relatives that were detroit firefighters a police officer or a firefighter and history goes back a lot farther my grandmother actually talked about at that time she talked about some great grandparents that were actually firefighters and buffalo new york as well as the city of flint wow that is always been probably the family's probably really comfortable with that as a profession but again i think as any child grows up you have that you know everybody likes a red shiny fire  truck everybody likes the excitement that that occurs and i think most people really romance about the you know the meaning the meaningful component of the job you know i never have to question what i do every day you know we have good days we have bad days even mention this but you did talk about running into burning wheels there is an adrenaline component of being able to utilize that in the course of helping people i think takes a certain kind of person you know we do need to have people there are willing to do that  you know when we do hire people we ask a lot of people we want to help people but we're also equally encouraged by those people that say you know i really want to i really want to go into that environment and i want to help people in that way so it is something that not everybody can  do and you do have to have a certain amount of selflessness you know and it does help to have a little bit of a crazy desire if you will to do these types of things again i'm not confusing that with recklessness but there is there has to be some rhyme and reason but it does take somebody willingness to do that expose themselves to so in takes a lot of training to understand what you're doing and how to predict what a fire is going to do where it's going to go and that really anybody totally knows that today right and if there's no absolutes in this there are certainly some theories or there's some new information out there now that underwriters labs and nist has conducted regarding fire and residential occupancies and a lot of the principles are the same with changing the frame or the mindset in which we we approach a residential fire so chris can you remember back to your very first fire yes again you know a lot of those tend to be very small i think i remember the most significant ones  for me to get involved after seeing what he did and what scene they had department when you were and yes there was a little awkward at first but i think you know that you know i think we were harder on ourselves making sure that we you know didn't have any nepotism or favoritism or anything like that and i think he did an exceptional job probably the point where i was concerned about ok are we really related and but great father great job but i do remember a couple of fires that stood out there you know again a lot of my most common fire in the united states today i believe is still cooking or result of cooking but early on again within six months of my completion of fire academy there was a fire in a neighboring apartment we were called in for mutual aid and what had happened there was a mother  grandmother and a grandson i believe was a fourth of july was late after midnight and they had become trapped in the second floor of the house unable to get out so i credit that fire for a lot of who i am today as far as my perspectives on prevention and our role in the community when it comes to prevention you know it seems like there are a lot of things that compete for our time the people that i work with competes competes for their time but again i think we still need to make time for prevention and that's i think one of the motivating factors i n my career for looking at how to prevent fire and you know we can prevent every fire from making sure that people are prepared to to respond in case or is a fire you know and i think about that in a positive way  very tragic event but you know there's a message there that we can do better and again it's the fire service is a very traditional organization and it takes time to to motivate change because everything we do is routine tradition and it may have been a culture but i was encouraged the other day had to see a small video on you tube regarding the philadelphia fire department and it was shot one nine hundred fifty eight within the first minute of that movie they'd actually talked about the efforts of the philadelphia fire department as a related to prevention so this is something that's always been around and my hope in holland and i'm blessed to have a team that i work with that is really joining me in that focus on prevention and view that is an important thing to do we still very motivated highly motivated to respond to fires that is you know the fact we're the only people in town the do that so far we have neighbors who do it but we have the training and we were you know we're expected to do that we course of your career i think every day is a challenge i tend adapt to although some people might question this but i really try to adapt and stay current i find that it you know the biggest challenge is really trying to they come in and different types of challenges with the fire possibilities say like the lithium ion battery plants that have come in that's a different type of danger and different type of thing to fight fire with right so you have to train with all that and you go to those businesses and do you run drills them and how to handle it or talk through things with the on we've had we have done some some planning with them we do have to revisit a lot of that i know initially there was a tremendous something that we do need to continue to work on which we eventually we do talk about some planning we have worked closely with l g recently and update to their emergency plan which included regular exercising of the plant so we look for that to people in emergency medical situations well that is wonderful we're so glad to be able to spend a couple minutes talking with with you chris and we're so thankful that you would receive this award a firefighter the year from the city of highland and i know there have been a lot of years that led up to this and we're very grateful as a community for all their service and for your continued dedication in helping us and who knows what type of emergency that that comes up so thanks so as good as the people i'm around and again i'm very humbled to get receive the award but i couldn't do it alone so i bring those people with me you know and keep them close so thank you but this is the ward was voted on by the people that work for you and the people that work with you there they say that you are leader a selfless person a real team player and we know that it's those kind of things that have spread throughout the organization and give us the strength of what we have as a fire department here in holland so we're very grateful that we have all the talked with you thank you thanks for tuning into this winter edition of city connections if you'd like to watch this again or other additions of city