Hacker News Reader

Interesting. A couple months ago, there were firefighters at my condo complex running a hose across the driveway into the building. I got past just before they ran the hose, but I stopped and asked them if they would be gone by the time I returned in about 30m, and they said "probably not, but if we're here you can just drive over the hose." That surprised me.

View on HN

Our brigade has hose ramps so we can let people drive over... But they're pretty far down the list of priorities to pull off the truck unless we're just training.

Yeah, that would surprise me as well. I can think of a couple of possible explanations:

- You were talking to somebody really young and inexperienced, who did not themselves realize the risk of letting somebody drive over hose.

- You were talking to a prototypical "world-weary, crusty old greybeard" who was so jaded and cynical that they were thinking to themselves: "It doesn't matter what I say, this person is going to drive over my hose anyway."

- They did in fact have the ramps, that @fukawi2 mentioned, deployed. Hose ramps do make if somewhat reasonable to drive over hose, but they are rarely deployed in my experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com