Fire Hoses

[LGreene]

Hello and Happy New Year! I have a rule against making New Year's resolutions, but I am going to make an effort to proactively share more info here rather than just responding to questions as they come in on this forum that I've been sponsoring for the last few years. I really value all of your insight...I've just been crazy-busy with other things.

In today's post on iDigHardware.com, I shared a photo from an elementary school, where pieces of fire hose were being used on the door closer arms for security. While I appreciate the thought behind cutting up old fire hoses for this purpose, there are a lot of potential problems (IMO). I am curious whether you are seeing/allowing this practice in your jurisdiction, and if yes, how you are making sure that they are not used improperly.

Here's the post if you want to see the photo: https://idighardware.com/2022/01/school-security-and-safety-in-2022/

- Lori

 

[e hilton]

Wow. Who would think that is a good idea? Certainly not the vertically-challenged teacher who can’t reach the closer to get her kids out the door.

 

[LGreene]

Wow. Who would think that is a good idea? Certainly not the vertically-challenged teacher who can’t reach the closer to get her kids out the door.

I completely agree, but what confused me was the number of fire departments that started cutting up their fire hoses and giving them to the schools. There is a news story about it here: https://idighardware.com/2018/05/ww-old-fire-hose/, and this one has a photo of a bunch of little kids who are able to get the door open even with the fire hose installed: https://idighardware.com/2019/01/ww-fire-hose-security-revisited/. This post talks about a lawsuit from an incident where a special education teacher was locked into a classroom with a student - the building administrator purposely used the fire hose to lock the teacher in: https://idighardware.com/2019/04/teacher-confined-fire-hose/.

With so many potential negatives, are fire departments still doing this?