Pictures that make your heart sink

I thought I would add pictures of what happens when a M211 and a M35A2 rolls down hill when the parking brake fails. Both instances the operators advanced ahead of the main fire to put out spot fires. With no baffles in the water tanks, the water slouched around, braking the grip of the parking brake band to the drum. Once the band slipped on the drum, the weight of the trucks plus full tanks of water, there was no stopping it. P.S no injuries on either truck.

I don't know how to link the photo albums, so if yo go to the Photo Gallery section and look at Crook County Wildland fire trucks, the photos will be in there.

The M-211 was rebuilt in 3 days to to the fact that there were 4 part trucks sitting in the County Maintenance yard. The M-35 went to auction and sold as a parts truck or scrap. somebody put a bid on it and got it.

Seems you guys might want to invest in some wheel chocks for your trucks!!!

Ever hear of chock blocks

Oh yea we used them, but parking on a fire break after a dozer been through made the area sandy, The trucks just rolled over them and pushed them down into the sand, about as effective as using an empty beer can in this case. But when you have a fire coming up your behind like this, there is no time to analyze your parking arrangement, You get your butt out of the truck set the parking brake and on your way to the hose you throw chocks under the wheel of the truck. then you battle the fire trying to save a house our something in that nature. The cost of the trucks to the county do even measure up to someone's house, I'll sacrifice a deuce any day to save a someone's house

I could say some thing, but

Now let me make a safety not here, for the 8 years I was on the fire department, these were only the two trucks ever damaged and they happened in the same year. So for how many wildland fires these trucks respond to usually 4 to 5 fires a year that burn over 10,000 acres and numerous smaller fires. Usually in the summer we respond twice a week for wild land fires. Our county is the size of Rhode Island. A pretty impressive record I must say.

It looks like Toonces the driving cat got ahold of those trucks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rdLOrOLJiA

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg_YVJOl3JA

Im sorry, I have to disagree. Apparatus placement is THE largest part of the drivers and offciers inital concern. Another 10 seconds perhaps to swing around so it's not pointed uphill (if terrain allowed it) probably would of prevented this. And if you dont have the 10 seconds, you need to reevaluate things to see if you really belong there.. And yes, I drive for my local FD, and usually driving the first due engine.. Apparatus placement is KEY to helping get a good inital attack going, and here, it falls squarley on the driver and officer's shoulders.

As for chocks. Rules here are chocks go down right after you get out of the cab. If you dont proceed DIRECTLY to the chock holders right next to the wheels and put the chocks in, bad things happen. After chocks are down, then you go to the pump panel and move water or hook up or whatever needs to be done.

Good thing no one got hurt, else this would be another NFPA statistic.

Murphy's law in effect.

I can't see the photos - but from my uninformed sideline coachng position - the M135/M211 are factory equipped with electric line locks on the brakes. Depress the brake pedal, throw the switch on the dashboard and a solenoid valve is actuated, holding the pressure in the brake lines. (The M-series wreckers have these as well). Perhaps its use would have prevented this incident.

The army mandated these be on the M135/M211 trucks because with their automatic tranmssions they could not be held stationary by placing them in gear (these GMCs - like everything of the era - had no "Park" detent in the transmission).

I once had a M35 that someone had added a commercaial line lock to - but being a purist I removed it.

Regards,
David

I have seen M35 with the brake line locks added. It doesn't take much to retrofit one. A nice feature to have when you have to park on an incline.

Man I did not know this was going to be turned into a debate as to what caused this or the fire fighting techniques, I'll guess I'll have to go into detail here about what occurred at each site.
First if anybody has been around a military vehicle fully loaded you have to pay close attention to keep them from rolling on you.
1st the M211, we were ordered to go to the fire break to put out a spot fire that jumped the line, when we arrived on scene, I position the M211 on the flattest ground possible with the truck also pointed into our escape route just in case the fire started to advance quicker then anticipated. Once I got the truck positioned to were we can reach the fire plus pointed in the direction of our escape route. I set the parking, as far as the "Micro Brake" and please note that all the warning labels says quote "do not use the Micro Brake for Parking purposes" unquote. So I never use it or depended up on it because of that warning. So I grab the hose and chocks. I chocked the truck and advance down hill to battle the spot fire, we were there for 10 minutes battling the fire when the truck started to roll down the firebreak. We positioned the truck according to all NFPA rules; every situation is different even on the same fire. But since fire is dynamitic situations chance every minute, especially in Wyoming when wind will chance direction 3 times an hour. I thought I had the truck secured, but the constant rocking back and forth on the on the hand brake was too much for the M211 to handle, plus if the freaking chock did not get pushed in the sand the chock would of held the truck. I did not perceived the ground to be so soft. Also, if you look at the design of the parking brake on the M211, It's only designed to hold a vehicle on flat land. If anyone knows anything about converting our military truck to wildland fire trucks, one will find out very quickly that they are underpowered and under braked. Especially static braking. One brake shoe band around a single drum is not adequate braking, it will not hold back 28,000 pounds on an incline. This is why the county is getting out of the military truck business for wildland fire fighting.
Now for the M35- the driver set the hand brake, when he got out of the truck to give one of the guys down the hill a nozzle, he accidentally kicked off the hand brake while getting out. Everyone knows who drives an m35a2 that if you're not careful getting out of the cab, you can kick the handle off with your butt while getting out.
Again military vehicles by design makes the worse possible wild land fire trucks for as far as safety is concerned. Back to the m211, when I had a chance, which is 99% of the time I always butted the truck’s front or rear bumper against a tree, that way I knew it wasn't going anywhere. This time I did not have a chance to use a tree, I just had to depend upon the chocks and brakes available, which were inadequate for the current situation (ground was too soft and too much of an incline). So after these vehicle rolled, with every precaution available, plus some other western states too had vehicles roll on them, a rule came out stating that if you are in a M211, the driver will not get out under any condition, if you are driving any other type military vehicle the transfer case will be put in low and the transmission will be place in 1st gear and the engine off if the driver is going to leave the truck. Do not depend on the parking brake and chocks alone!
Our fire department at that time, half of our vehicles were military trucks, if you were the lucky ones and got there early you were able to grab on of the civilian type trucks. The people who came in later always got stuck with a military vehicle, me since I was one of the mechanics it seems I always got stuck with the M211. Nobody else wanted to drive it. I like military vehicles, I own a M211, but I hated them as a wildland fire truck just because of the situation. They were a pain to keep from rolling on you when fully loaded.
Now for qualifications, if you did not hold a red card you did not go to wildland fires. Also most of our members were FF1 or FF2 qualified. Everyone had to wear all the proper Nomax (yellow shirt and green pants, with a hard hat and shelter) We took our training serious, because we even fought fires on forest service property. Our equipment and training had to meet forest service requirements as they inspected our trucks and our training records before we went into a fire scene. If the truck failed the inspection or you were not trained to the point they felt necessary, you went home. We are not a bunch of hillbillies getting together drinking beer and calling ourselves a fire department as it is in some states.
So please stop replying that we didn’t know our vehicles or we did not know our responsibilities. That’s the furthest form the truth.

oooh ooooh that smell

like that old song from lynard skynard",cant you smell that smell",thats how i knew i left the electric brake switch on my m211 on,even with a good adjustment on the brakes,my m211 in low range drove for about3 miles with the brakes on,and i just thought the truck was so sluggish because of the deep mud i was in,"such a fool,such a fool yeah, oooh ooooh that smell" ,needless to say i disconnected the micro switch,and have never hooked it back up,i keep the e brake adjustment good,and every time i get out of the cab,the chock blocks go down,saw a vfd m211 driven with the e brake on so long that the ebrake drum exploded ,got so hot that the paint on the transfer case burned and flaked off,never did find the remains of the e brake drum,SIS [self inflicted stupidity] in action, i learned the hard way about that switch,hate to hear about the loss of the trucks,thanks to all who put themselves in harms way for the rest of us,and the truck doesnt care if the ebrake and the switch are on it will drive off,really noticible in hi range,lo range is another story,

RE: oooh ooooh that smell

I don't understand the reasoning behind the weak hand brake systems on military vehicles. So when you can drive with the brakes activated that shows there is a design flaw.
Now David, you are the god of knowledge when it comes to military vehicles. My knowledge of these trucks compared to yours is just a drop in the bucket. I read all your articles in military vehicles magazine that you write. You have taught me a lot of the designs and why behind the vehicles.
But in TM 9-8024 pg 62 Para b Application of Temporary Parking Brake
CAUTION: The temporary parking brake is for emergency use only in the event of mechanical parking brake failure. This brake system must not depended upon to hold the vehicle for an extended periods. The mechanical parking brake must be adjusted or repaired at the earliest opportunity so that the necessity of using the temporary parking brake will be minimized.
This is why I never applied it. I needed to know right away if the truck was going to hold.
Is there more to this then what the book says? Or is the book taking a safe side?
On my m211 the my solenoid is electrically bad, I never had a chance to use it on the fire department truck, because of the warning, I ignored the temporary brake.

RE: oooh ooooh that smell

Steve, I wonder if there is a way to learn from these misfortunes....

What about this? Attach heavy hooking points to the body directly in front/behind the rear wheels. To the wheel chocks, attach heavy logging chain, that is long enough to reach the hooking points from the chocks when they are properly placed. This would make it so even if the truck attempts to roll over the chocks, it will pull the chain tight with the wheels (kind of like the scotch lock for winching).

(I had brought up the wheel chock thing in the begining in hopes to help find a solution, not to bash you/your department for the accidents)

RE: oooh ooooh that smell

Steve,
I have the Aberdeen Proving Ground test reports on the GMCs - and here is the thrust of the electric brakes.

The concern about using them for extended periods of time is two fold. First of all - if you were to say park the truck in the motorpool and leave this on, when you come back in a week the battery would be dead.

The second concern is that any leak in the brake system will allow the brakes to "bleed off" and release. With a single-circuit brake system and twelve wheel cylinders, this is a major concern. This is probably the case with Butch's truck above - as I'm surprised it would move at all with the brake lock on. My M62 absolutely won't move out of its tracks with the electric brake lock on.

What the report does not make clear is why they felt the band type brake was inadequate. The military specifications for tactical wheeled vehicles require that the brakes hold the vehicle with full load on something like a 60% grade - and while on paper all of them will, darn few of mine seem to! (I had a truck roll through a neighbors shop - and yes, it was the truck that I had taken the line lock off of).

FWIW, I've noticed that Memphis Equipment removes the new style "hit it with your rear end" parking brake levers from all the trucks they sell, and installs the old style "squeeze to release" levers in their place. One aspect of the trucks evolution that was not an advance.

Never intended for my comments to be construed that any of the firefighters involved not know their responsibilites or vehicles.

Finally, only one God - and that's not me, even with a lower case g.

Best wishes,
David

RE: oooh ooooh that smell

Will David how about King of knowledge then? Ha,Ha As you also can tell, I'm one horrible typist. You think spell check would of caught the lower case on the word God, but it didn't.

Thanks for the update on the information of the electric brakes, That makes it clear why such a warning was put in the manuals.(piss poor way of wording the warning if you ask me) Working on aircraft for such a long time, when I read something like that warning for the way it was printed in the manual, my thought is why bother to have a system put in place if you can't depend on it for what's it there for. Then my response is not to use it at all.

RE: oooh ooooh that smell

Hey Mike, I like your idea of the chock system , even though I'm not on the fire department any more, (Moved to a different town,) I'll look into that for my M211.

PS It was my fault for the way you guys responded to my topic, I did not explain completely to the events that took place, So to keep from getting the same type of responce, I just had to explained in more detail of what we did and did not do so you guys could get a clearer picture. Sorry for being so brief the first time. .

By the way the interesting thing about this is that is shows the stregth of the M211. It took out 5 trees that were the size of telephone poles. chopped those babbies right at bumper height. All the damage to the top was due to the trees falling on the truck. The damage to the M211 was:
a bent frame member, we strighten that back with no problem. Yes we crossed measured everything and took measurements from another M211
changed out the front bumper,
changed out the front grill assembly,
changed out the drivers door,
changed out the windshield assembly,
changed out the left fender,
straighten out the drivers door frame, no problem
replaced the top
replaced the hood.
repainted the truck

RE: oooh ooooh that smell

Steve, Maybe due to the mishaps that department has had, you could forward on any suggestions to help them out in the future.

RE: oooh ooooh that smell

Thanks Mike,
I hope you guys did not get the impression that this happened yesterday, this happened back 2004, That year there were 6 or 7 roll aways nation wide with the M211’s and the M35A2. We’ve also changed the style of chocks. Instead of being two man crews they went to three man crews, this is a good move one that person remains at the truck will also look out as a local fire watch. So it added just another safety plus to an already dangerous situation. Fighting the fire it’s self.
Since I only joined the site a month ago I was not aware of how quick you guys are to helping in on a situation. Next time I post pictures, I’ll defiantly be more careful and be more specific of who, what, where, and when. I did not mean to miss lead anyone. If I did, I’m very sorry.
But your suggestions are not going on deaf ears, just because this happened a few years ago, the present owners of M211’s and alike trucks need to be aware that these things will get away from you an a split second. So when leaving the vehicle, make double sure it’s secured properly. I always chock my M211 even when it’s in the driveway. It’s just habit to grab a chock that I keep under the driver’s seat and throw it between the rear wheels.