Fire Engines. Part-Two.

Specialist vehicles.

New York was the first skyscraper city and Paris had its Eiffel tower, but as the 20th Century progressed Hong Kong, Tokyo and Dubai would see the popularity of having the race for the highest tower blocks. Nothing different was thought of in the west until 9/11, but Moscow had to cope with the various Chechen militant attacks five years earlier which killed hundreds of people.

Japan has set in place specialist vehicles to deal with Earthquakes and high towers, if they are not fully evacuated. Claims have been made in the U.K. and U.S. that they have various hydraulics to rescue people in the event of a fire from high-rise buildings. There are so many problems with getting ladders up to great heights, wind is one and mechanical failure is another.

Many of these vehicle types are based around the eight-wheel chassis of military transports and the up to twenty-wheel civil telescopic cranes. in the future It it better to fit some form of emergency elevators/lifts to securely evacuate buildings in the future and we just do not really know anything until that dreadful event should occur.

Cranes. Part-One.

Ancient to Present.

The crane has been around as long as man has been on the Earth, Stone Henge in the United Kingdom, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Great wall of China could not have been constructed without some form of crane or pulling device.

Slaves and animals too played an essential part, because the people who designed and built these monuments where part of high society and part of powerful empires. Today we take the crane and various lifters for granted, not high rise can be built without them being built into the structure of the towers in New York, Dubai and London.

Today there are a variety of types available to do different types of lifting, some of this being the recovery of heavy loads or the moving over structures into confined spaces. This is were the telescopic cranes have come into their own right.

Telescopic Cranes.

Construction to Recovery.

The building industry and the recovery business needs these monster cranes to fit into awkward places to work. In all the big cities around the world you will find these telescopic cranes at work, from loading or unloading construction materials to lifting segments of other cranes, wall section, glass and so it goes on.

Meanwhile in recovery they can deal with de-railed trains, tankers and other stock and there are various other uses for them too. The crane is one thing and it is quite simple in its development and use, but it has to be the trucks used to carry the equipment that are an awesome sight.

It was the design of military heavy transporters that has lead to the 8X8 and even bigger vehicles being used. For now we will just touch upon an few models, but in the future i hope to have a more lengthy or detailed look.

The Czech Tatra T816-6, American HEMTT, German Faun Fs 42.75/42, Mercedes-Benz 4850A, Russian MAZ-537.