On May 30th an ambulance was caused to stop, in the middle of the emergency transport to the hospital of a suspect who had been shot by police. The ambulance, operated by the Washington, DC Fire Department (Medic 19) was powered by a diesel engine equipped with an EPA mandated device which shuts the engine off when for any reason exhaust emissions fail to comply with government standards. The patient was pronounced dead at the hospital when he arrived there after being transferred to another ambulance. Asphyxiation has been ruled out as the cause of the patient's death.
DC Deputy Fire Chief John Donnelly says his department's challenge is to work within the federal agencies restrictions.
We should all feel relieved and safer as a result of the Environmental Protection Agency.
5 comments:
If that were the only death attributable to the leftist insanity, it would be a vast improvement. More than 30 million people have died secondary to leftist polices and that's just regarding the ban on DDT. One guy bites the dust while on his way to be treated for high velocity lead poisoning, is small potatoes. One would think that there would be an exception for emergency vehicles because people's lives depend on them. But one would be wrong.
Par for the course, I'd say.
As a person in the industry this incident shows total incompetance on the part of the operators of the ambulance.There are several warnings-check and engine warning lites-before final derate or shutdown.Depending on duty cycle this can be up to 8 hours run time before final action.The aftertreatment is also considered a maintenance item-as I said this is sheer incompetance on tne part of DCFD. Evev scarier is these systems are on fire trucks also-mandated by EPA since 07.
"However, Deputy Chief Donnelly says their challenge is to work within the federal agencies restrictions." Liberal gibberish at its finest.
Good thing nobody who mattered died as a result.
_revjen45
Not sure which industry anonymous #1 is in, but I doubt it's the ambulance or fire industry. As a 24 year (and counting) veteran firefighter I can tell you that we hate these things. Call volume can preclude taking the time to run the "regen" system, which can take upwards of 20 minutes of uninterrupted time or you'll have to start over. Sensors can go bad causing all kinds of problems. And think about being the manifold company (first and primary pumping engine) at a large fire for several hours when your engine decides it's time to regen. No way to override it. Water flow stops immediately. Think that might have some bad consequences?
These particulate trapping, power-robbing, fuel-wasting and burn-off systems can be deleted and the CPU reprogrammed to ignore the absence of sensors and the timed "need" to make your vehicle unavailable by a half-competent Diesel mechanic. It's against EPA rules, but so what?
Is it most important for emergency vehicles to save lives or minimize air pollution?
Does running a clean-running Diesel engine make more or less pollution (in a year!) than burning down a plastic-filled house?
Pass a local exemption to require emergency vehicles to be modified to be as reliable and available for life-saving as possible. Make the Fed's at EPA defend the deaths of named innocents in front of Congress and your local Sheriff. Make the Fed's unwelcome in your County and State.
Diesel engines can be made incredibly reliable and all-climate operable, as well as mechanically simple needing only minimal and low-skill maintenance for years. These kind of Diesels will put out a little bit of start-up smoke, but will cost much less than the Rube Goldberg hyper-complexity that a 2013 heavy duty Diesel is.
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