Sparks from cutting metal and spilled fuel don’t mix. Firefighter Scott Schermerhorn from Fairfax County Fire and Rescue emailed us about this video. Actually we need to thank his Lieutenant who showed it to him. (Thanks Lou!) It looks like the issue could have been caused by some fuel spilled on the ground (during refueling) or from a leaking fuel cap.

Lt. Brian Bull from Clermont Fire sent in these photos of a different style of burglar bar installation. Check out the supplemental page for a complete description.

Don’t forget to send in your videos for the Ultimate Truck Video! See the post below for details.

We have partnered with our friends at TheBravestOnline.com to help them produce the Ultimate Truck Video! Undoubtedly, by now, you are familiar with their high quality videos… We have used number of them on our site. Basically they are going to compile a number of truck company related photos and videos into one. Once completed, the video will be available for FREE download! They will also have a high quality DVD version available by mail for under $10! But here’s the thing, we want to include your material! We are interested in all the truck company related material you’ve got. Please send your photos and videos now to thebravestonline@gmail.com Please put “VES truckie” in the subject line! If the file to too large to email, or you run into any other email related problems, let us know, we’ve got other options. We look forward to hearing from you!

Be sure to check out some of or new links. We finally caught up on all of the requests we had been receiving. If we have inadvertently left any out, please let us know. We have also added an additional email address it’s staff@vententersearch.com it emails both Jimm and Jeff simultaneously. We can still be reached individually at jimm@vententersearch.com and jeff@vententersearch.com 

Here’s a real simple and effective time saver. Believe it or not it each ladder has a different balance point. For example, a roof ladder is not balanced exactly in the middle; the hooks add enough weight to affect the balance point. A simple stripe of paint or reflective tape at the balance point eliminates the guess work. Who wants to take the time to count rungs…Just place the mark on your shoulder and the ladder is perfectly balanced every time.

Pictured above is a 14 and a 24 placed next to each other, you can see in the photo that the 14’s balance point is closer to the tip due to the weight of the hooks.

Another tip is to use different colored stripes (or combination of stripes) for each unit. It’s easier to distinguish which ladder is which when multiple units have thrown ladders.-Jimm-

We are not quite sure what happened, but our July 2006 posts disappeared. We noticed it a while back and were trying different ways to recover the information. Well guess what; we learned an important lesson about how we were backing up our information. Believe it or not, our backup method would not allow us to recover just a few posts at a time. We don’t want to bore you with the details, but we think we’ve figured it out so it won’t happen again. (knock on wood) We did our best to recover as much of the information as possible it should be back up in the archives section. All of your comments have been cut and pasted into one comment to make it easier to fix. -Jimm-

The missing posts were:
Webbing Tips
Ladder Placement
Enter This!
WP Ordinary Residential Job

To view them click on July 2006 under the archives heading to the right.

This video shows an important lesson about garage doors. Make sure to have your sound turned on to hear what happens toward the end. We actually received multiple emails and phone calls telling us about this video. Thank you to all who took the time to let us know about it. -Jimm-