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COLONIAL
towns purchased ladders and hooks to hang on the
walls of the town meeting hall. The citizens were
expected to retrieve a ladder and a hook and race
to a fire when the fire bell rang. Hooks were used
to tear off the thatched roofs and pull down the
flimsy walls of the homes and businesses ahead of a
rapidly-spreading wall. When volunteer fire
departments organized, one of the fire companies
mounted the ladders and hooks onto its apparatus.
Thus was coined the term "Hook &
Ladder." The third
volunteer fire company in Houston was Hook &
Ladder No. 1 organized on April 17, 1858. Members
of the ladder company were men of influence and
well to do. They
built their own ladder truck. The truck
carried a variety of wooden ladders mounted in a
single stack.
It also
carried other types of minor equipment, although
hooks may not have been part of the inventory in
Houston. Hook &
Ladder No. 1 added a Preston service truck some
time later. The city service truck was pulled by
two horses and carried eight ground ladders, one of
which was a 50-foot extension ladder. There was no
picture of the Preston service truck found in the
archives. Motorized
service trucks began to show up around 1914. Ladder
No. 7 got a Seagrave service truck that
year. In
1915, the pictured American LaFrance
service truck replaced No. 1 Preston
service truck. Fire Station
No. 14 was annexed in 1918, and a new American
LaFrance service truck was purchased for Ladder 14
five years later. LaFrance service trucks continued
to be purchased or moved around as new ladder
companies opened. An
opportunity came as Japan was planning Pearl
Harbor. Another city had ordered two Mack service
trucks, but backed out of the contract after the
trucks were built. The fire department latched onto
the trucks, which had features quite unique for
Houston. The
Macks had an enclosed cab. All of the fire
apparatus in the past offered no
protection for the officer and driver.
Windshields were even a fairly recent
addition. Both rigs
carried a complement of ground ladders, the longest
of which was 45 feet with tormentor
poles. Tormentors
poles were manned by two laddermen to assist four
other laddermen to raise the heavy extension
ladder. The service trucks
went to
Station 7 and to a newly-built Station 4 in
1941. Aerial ladder
trucks began to slowly replace the service truck
after World War II. In the 1950s, the few service
trucks remaining were in reserve. All first line
truck companies were aerial ladders, and city
service trucks faded into history. |
