The alarm sounds. Firefighters jump from their bunks, pull up their boot straps, and sprint toward the station's fire slide?
These days, not every fire station comes with the iconic brass pole. Many fire departments across the USA have or are opting instead to install a slide, either of the plastic looping variety or the traditional steel playground-style.
Sometimes it's for safety or insurance purposes, and sometimes it just suits the station better.
In Ocean City, Md., volunteer fire company president Cliff Christello said they're weighing the possibility of installing a slide at their new firehouse, which is still on the drawing board. He said because their insurer balked, they won't be installing a pole.
Christello said the potential injuries a firefighter faces when up against a 20-foot drop aren't minor. A knee or ankle could sustain real damage by coming to an abrupt stop at the end.
"And to be honest with you, the national trend is doing away from them (poles), because of insurance reasons. Because they've done this study, and they've said a€Â" these guys are spraining their ankles, and everything else on the pole," he said.
The liability risk of fire poles is typically a workers compensation issue, one handled at the municipal level, according to Scott Harkins, senior vice president of Risk Control Services for Volunteer Firemen's Insurance Services Inc., an insurer of emergency services operations.
In Dublin, Ohio, firefighters skipped the pole when they built Fire Station 95 a few years back because nagging injuries had plagued others late in their careers, according to former chief Gene Bostick.
The station's unique design constraints -- it's built into the base of a water tower -- demanded something other than a fire pole.
"Personally, I think it's a great way. You don't have the impact when they come down, to maybe do injury to the back or neck or shoulders," Bostick said.
Peter O'Scanaill, owner of American Playground Corp., based in Anderson, Ind., said the trend is solidly growing in the last three years. He said the company installed about six in 2012, and already has interest in another half dozen more for this year.
"We have been at the forefront of the metal slides that are going into fire stations," he said. "We modified our spiral (playground) slide so it would be bigger, and accommodate firemen of the size that they are. This results in taking minutes off the time it would take to get from the upper level of a fire station to the actual truck, and minutes and seconds save life."
The National Fire Protection Association in Quincy, Mass., takes no official stance on whether slides or poles are superior. They only want to prevent accidental falls.
"You have to have it in a gated enclosure or behind a door," said NFPA spokesman Ken Willette. "We leave it to the local community to determine whether a fire pole is correct for them or not."
Willette also said insurance companies make their own decisions based on risk analysis, and that varies by insurer.
Don Fentress, an insurance agent with Atlantic/Smith, Cropper & Deely in Willards, Md., said whether a station has a fire pole isn't a question that comes up on an insurance application with their carrier.
Mike Scott is a public safety architect in San Luis Obispo, Calif., who specializes in designing fire stations. He said his employer, RRM Design Group, has not designed slides for any fire stations, not yet.
Some fire departments are building a single-story fire station to bypass the argument entirely, Scott said.
"So they're running straight down the hallways and out the door," he said.
Shane also reports for The (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times
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