[RhysU]

Are you serious?! If my town loses power for two weeks I want fire trucks, ambulances, tow trucks, and especially power company trucks to work! Civic infrastructure should anticipate tail events.

> How do you pump fuel if the grid is down?

Gravity. Siphons. Manual pumps. Etc. Real complicated stuff known since figuratively Roman times.

[cogman10]

> Generators are a thing that pretty much every one of these services will have. Because you can't have a fire station, EMT dispatch, etc go dark because of a grid down situation.

[RhysU]

"Shouldn't" and "can't" are different things.

I can power a couple of radios with far less than a full generator.

[jtbayly]

And you need a giant generator to charge any large vehicle in a reasonable amount of time, not just a generator that can keep the electricity on in the building.

[the_mar]

what if i told you, you still need to charge ur fire truck

[RhysU]

Alternators won't do it?

[catiopatio]

The (very large) alternator will power the onboard electrical systems and charge the chassis/equipment batteries while the engine is running.

When sitting in a truck bay, there’s a shore line providing mains power to keep everything charged — we’re generally talking a 10-16A draw.

That’s easily met with a small generator, as opposed to the insane power draw a full EV battery would require.

[dan000892]

The fire apparatus I’ve worked on have a 120V inlet called a shoreline to keep equipment (MDT, radios, cardiac monitor, portable suction, and Lucas battery chargers, interior lighting, etc) operational at station without draining the battery.

[lelanthran]

> Generators are a thing that pretty much every one of these services will have. Because you can't have a fire station, EMT dispatch, etc go dark because of a grid down situation.

Okay, work out the size of a generator needed to power one truck vs the dispatch offices. Now tell us how many generators you need.

[anakaine]

Ever heard of diesel-electric drive trains? The vehicles have electric motors at the wheels and a much smaller then usual internal combustion engine that is an onboard generator.

You can have both at once. This is what happens with some trains, frequently happens in mining, and happens in some large industries. It is what occurs with hybrid electric vehicles.

The latest round of electric vehicles are getting 80km (50 miles) off the battery. That sort of thing is find for most of the service vehicle types you listed, and meets the requirements for greening a fleet and having alternative power options.

[XorNot]

> Gravity. Siphons. Manual pumps. Etc. Real complicated stuff known since figuratively Roman times.

This is one of those statements that sounds reasonable when its you with your consumer-grade whatever, and has absolutely no relevance to large scale logistics and planning.

Fuel in ground tanks when the black out starts is...fuel in the ground tanks which is going to stay there because no amount of human labor is getting enough of it out to keep multiple trucks going.

[spott]

Fuel in ground tanks can be pumped out by manually pumping enough to power a generator to power the regular pumps... which is pretty trivial to set up.

[988747]

Or you can just keep the generator fueled (they tend to come with built-in fuel tanks), and have a spare 50-gallon barrel of fuel stashed somewhere.

[anakaine]

Fuel in ground tanks can be pumped out with a manual hand pump. It's not that hard and frequently used on remote property tanks.

[TEP_Kim_Il_Sung]

Omly need to get one truck going: The pump truck.

[hoseja]

You are really blind to the amount of established infrastructure needed to get dinosaur juice to all the boonies.

[prottog]

Isn't the point that the established infrastructure is already established?