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Showing posts with label towers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label towers. Show all posts

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

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.

Tuesday, 21 July 2015

Tugboats. Part-Two.

A different kind of Life.

It takes a certain kind of person to work on the tugboat, 'Hours and hours of boredom, interrupted by moments of sheer terror.' It is not a job for the faint hearted, crews are expected to go out in all weathers and work on the outside of the boat with the chains even in very rough seas.

The tugboat is designed with a glass tower for the crew to see all around them at all times. In 1900 two classes of tugboats were introduced and improved paddle and a steamer and these were no real changes until 1950. In the war years 1939-45 there were some adaptions made to handle larger warships and older boats started to be withdrawn.

In 1950 boats went from steam to the diesel and so ended the 'days of the 'Puffing Billy.' With post war shipping and the introduction of the Super Tankers new designs had to made to handle these huge sea vessels. It has been a slow history for the tugboat, because there were no big changes in the shipping world until the late 1950s.