Books with title Fire Engines Up Close

Pumper trucks and big ladder trucks: sound the alarm, the fire department vehicles are on the move! Here they are, across the pages and in huge gatefolds, showcasing all the personnel and equipment needed to douse the flames and rescue people in danger. And there’s nothing that gets kids more fired up than firefighters and their engines. They’ll get a close-up look at it all: hoses, ladder lines, gauges, control panels, outriggers, deluge pumps, and the special clothing and self-contained breathing apparatus that keep the fighters safe. Plus, there’s an explanation of firefighter lingo, the rules all firefighters follow, and firefighting around the world.

More complex and imposing than any other vehicle in the British emergency services, the fire engine has a long and interesting history. The earliest water pumps had been developed by the eighteenth century--basic manual pumps that had to be hauled around by people or horses, and were often only used on fire-insured premises. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries horse-drawn, steam-powered fire engines, and eventually motorized fire engines, came to revolutionize firefighting, offering far greater versatility and the brigades came to be run by the municipalities. In this beautifully illustrated introduction, Eddie Baker charts the history of fire engines and their variants, and the increasingly complex equipment they have carried, such as high-rise ladders and high-pressure hoses. He also explains the wider history of the fire service and how the engines have been shaped by its needs and, most importantly, those of the firefighters themselves.