Special Delivery Alan M. Petrillo
The Green Bay Metro (WI) Fire Department had been running a tractor trailer unit and a small rescue truck that carried hazardous materials equipment to its hazmat calls but decided to purchase a single vehicle that could carry its necessary hazmat equipment and gear to a scene and transport more firefighters.
Green Bay Metro found the answer to its predicament when it had E-ONE build a walk-around hazmat truck that perfectly met its needs.
Mike Vanden Avond, Green Bay Metro’s hazmat battalion chief, says the department needed a new tractor for its fifth wheel hazmat trailer but couldn’t find one that would work, so it changed its thinking and decided to go with a single vehicle dedicated to hazmat responses. “While our new truck is dedicated for hazmat, it also responds to box alarm fire calls because it has a mobile fill station and an air bottle cascade system for 10 spare MSA one-hour bottles and 10 MSA air packs,” Vanden Avond points out.
1. The hazmat truck that E-ONE built for the Green Bay Metro (WI) Fire Department is built on a three-door Typhoon cab and chassis with a 24-inch Vista raised roof and seating for four firefighters and a command area at the back of the crew cab. (Photos courtesy of Fire Service Inc.)
Michael Purvis, E-ONE’s director of sales, says the Green Bay Metro hazmat truck is built on a Typhoon chassis and three-door cab with a 24-inch Vista raised roof and seating for four firefighters, three in self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA); a command center in the crew cab with two workstations; a severe duty interior; RollTek air bags; and barrier style doors. The rig has a 274-inch wheelbase, is 41 feet 8 inches long, and is 11 feet 5 inches high.
Purvis notes the truck is powered by a 500-horsepower (hp) Cummins X12 engine and an Allison 4000P EVS automatic transmission and has a formed 304L stainless steel body that includes a side climb integral ladder in the body for a protected climb in blocking mode. It also has six coffin compartments on top holding six DOT 6,000-pound-per- square-inch (psi) breathing air cylinders and a fill station in a compartment below. “The stainless steel body allows for a longer body in a one-piece design, which improves its durability,” Purvis says. “And, the longer body also allows for a significant amount of storage space in the compartments and on top of the vehicle.”
Jim Castellano, vice president of sales for Fire Service Inc., who sold the hazmat truck to Green Bay Metro, calls the rig “a big, huge toolbox. Besides the command area in the cab for research and control, the hazmat truck has 11 exterior compartments, five on each side and one at the rear.