the.com/fire engine
a thousand-gallon dragon that runs toward the thing everyone else flees.
means A large vehicle equipped with pumps, hoses, water tanks, and ladders that firefighters use to reach and extinguish fires.
from A plain compound of "fire" (Old English fȳr, the burning itself) and "engine" — which once meant something far broader than a motor. "Engine" descends from Latin ingenium, "natural talent, cleverness, ingenuity," and for centuries it named any clever contrivance or machine. So a "fire engine" was literally a clever device for fighting fire — and indeed the earliest ones, in use well before petrol motors existed, were hand-pumped or horse-drawn water pumps. The name kept its old sense of "ingenious machine" long after "engine" came to mean a power plant under a hood.
- red myth
- yellow-green is more visible; tradition keeps them red
- water hog
- pumps over 1,000 gallons per minute
- heavy beast
- a loaded truck weighs more than a school bus
- engine vs truck
- engines carry water, ladder trucks carry the ladders
- the siren
- changes pitch as it passes via Doppler effect
ladder 49 fdny — iconic new york city fire department engine company featured in films and documentaries
engine 51 lafd — los angeles fire department engine from the 1970s tv show 'emergency!' starring randy mantooth