{"id":8399,"date":"2012-07-30T13:35:29","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T18:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=8399"},"modified":"2012-07-30T13:36:08","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T18:36:08","slug":"all-forest-service-fire-hoses-are-made-by-blind-and-visually-impaired-oklahomans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/07\/30\/all-forest-service-fire-hoses-are-made-by-blind-and-visually-impaired-oklahomans\/","title":{"rendered":"All Forest Service Fire Hoses are Made by Blind and Visually Impaired Oklahomans"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_8400\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"NewView Oklahoma assembles all the fire hoses for the U.S. Forestry Service, including ones used to battle devastating blazes in Colorado\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2012\/07\/co-hoses.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8400\" title=\"Fire Hoses\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2012\/07\/co-hoses-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Spencer Platt \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">NewView Oklahoma assembles all the fire hoses for the U.S. Forestry Service, including ones used to battle devastating blazes in Colorado<\/p>\n<\/div><p>The sole supplier of fire hoses to the U.S. Forest Service is an Oklahoma not-for-profit.<\/p><p>Workers on the group&#8217;s Oklahoma City production lines crank out about 60,000 fire hoses a year, <a href=\"http:\/\/newsok.com\/newview-oklahoma-gives-those-with-vision-impairments-jobs-such-as-assembling-fire-hoses-for-the-u.s.-forest-service\/article\/3696466\/?page=1\">writes<\/a> <em>The Oklahoman<\/em> columnist Bryan Painter:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The hose comes to NewView, employees cut it to the proper length, add couplings, stamp information on the sides and then roll and box the hoses and ship.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>NewView Oklahoma has been assembling fire hoses for about 12 years, and all the workers are blind or visually impaired Oklahomans.<\/p><p><!--more--><\/p><p>Before he started with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newviewoklahoma.org\/\">NewView<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 formerly Oklahoma League for the Blind \u2014 Larry Troxell spent his days sitting and &#8220;rotting,&#8221; he tells Painter.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThese people down here gave me the opportunity to come in and be a member of society again,\u201d he said. \u201cI could actually associate with my co-workers here and make money and be a productive part of society again.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>Troxell enjoys earning a salary, but tells Painter the real value is his role in providing important equipment for public good. For example, fire hoses he helped assemble were recently used to battle <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2012\/07\/29\/the-scars-of-a-colorado-fire\/\">devastating blazes in Colorado<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWhen we actually couple them we make sure in our own mind that these things do not leak,\u201d he said, \u201cthat there&#8217;s not defects in them when we let go of the hose and send it over to the next stop and go on down until it&#8217;s packaged and out the door. That&#8217;s our goal here is zero defects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sole supplier of fire hoses to the U.S. Forest Service is an Oklahoma not-for-profit.Workers on the group&#8217;s Oklahoma City production lines crank out about 60,000 fire hoses a year, writes The Oklahoman columnist Bryan Painter: The hose comes to NewView, employees cut it to the proper length, add couplings, stamp information on the sides [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":8400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301,300],"tags":[412],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}