Compiled by Ron Heal

delivery of the month

Pierce-Village of Niles (IL) Fire Department, 100-foot platform quint. Dash CF PUC cab and chassis; Detroit DD13 500-hp engine; Pierce 1,500-single-stage pump; UPF Poly 300-gallon tank; 20-gallon foam cell; Pierce Husky 12 Class A foam system; Harrison 10-kW generator. $1,161,000. Dealer: Rick Berndt, Global Emergency Products, Aurora, IL.

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Rosenbauer-Guelph (Ontario, Canada) Fire Department-102-foot Raptor EXT platform quint. Commander 4000 R608 cab and chassis; Cummins ISL9 450-hp engine; Hale DSD 1,250-gpm pump; UPF Poly 300-gallon tank; 20-gallon foam cell; FoamPro 2002 single-agent foam system; Onan 10-kW generator. $1,272,000. Dealer: Brian Innis, ResQTech System Inc., Woodstock, Ontario. (Photo courtesy of Guelph Fire Department.)

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Ferrara-Long Beach (NY) Fire Department, four pumpers. Ultra cabs and chassis; Cummins ISL9 450-hp engines; UPF Poly 500-gallon tanks; Hale Qmax 1,500-gpm pumps; Harrison 6-kW generators; extra low hosebeds; welded stainless steel fire bodies. $550,000 each. Dealer: John Heidrich, Neville Apparatus, New Hyde Park, NY.

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E-ONE-Dunlap Community Fire Protection District (IL) pumper. Typhoon X cab and chassis; Cummins ISL 450-hp engine; Hale RSD/RGA 1,500-gpm rear-mount pump; UPF Poly 750-gallon tank; 30-gallon foam cell; Harrison/TNT PTO hydraulic system for rescue tools; two Hurst hydraulic reels; large rescue-style compartments. $386,276. Dealer: Craig Hamrick, Banner Fire Equipment, Roxana, IL. (Photo by Ron Heal.)

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KME-Borough of Rumson (NJ) Fire Company, pumper. Predator Panther cab and chassis; Cummins ISL9 380-hp engine; Hale DSD 1,500-gpm pump; 750-gallon polypropylene tank; 20-inch front bumper extension with two hose wells; Smart Power 6-kW generator. $365,000. Dealer: Jim Phillips, First Priority Emergency Vehicles, Manchester Twp., NJ. (Photo by John Malecky.)

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HME-Sonoma Valley Fire Protection District, 34D-Type III pumper. International 7400 cab and chassis; MaxxForce9 330-hp engine; Darley JMP 500-gpm PTO midship pump; 500-gallon polypropylene tank; 20-gallon foam cell; FoamPro 1600 2.0 foam system; Sigtronics intercom system. $319,875. Dealer: Bob Becker, Fire Truck Sales and Service, Woodland, CA.

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Spartan ERV-Arlington (TX) Fire Department, pumper. Metro Star cab and chassis; Cummins ISL9 450-hp engine; Waterous CSU 1,500-gpm pump; UPF Poly 750-gallon tank; two 25-gallon foam cells; FoamPro 2002 dual-agent foam system; SVI Knight Light II light tower. $504,000. Dealer: Craig Russell, Metro Fire Apparatus Specialists, Houston, TX.

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Sutphen-Prospect Heights Fire Company, Ewing Township, NJ, special service unit. International Terra Star cab and chassis; Maxxforce7 300-hp engin

F.I.E.R.O. Fire Station Design Tip

To accommodate today's fire apparatus, apparatus bay door opening widths should never be less than 14 feet wide. United States Department of Transportation regulations allow "commercial" vehicles to be up to 8.53 feet wide. This allowance excludes mirrors and safety devices such as running lights mounted on the ends of rubber stems. Apparatus bay door heights less than 14 feet will limit a fire department's options with respect to apparatus with aerial devices and top-mounted features on engines. Special purpose aircraft rescue and firefighting (ARFF) vehicles are typically 12 feet wide and need a correspondingly wider door. The exception to the standard width and height of 14 feet might be in a renovation of an existing station, where local historic district guidelines will not allow wholesale alteration of the façade. Don Collins, Captain, Clemson University Fire Department

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SMEAL FIRE APPARATUS COMPANY has delivered four fire apparatus equipped with Smeal's SG-09® GREEN POWER Technology to Markham (Ontario) Fire & Rescue Services. Smeal's dealer, Safetek Emergency Vehicles, sold and delivered the order, which includes three Smeal custom pumpers and one 105-foot heavy-duty aerial ladder. The SG-09 GREEN POWER idle-reduction system uses an auxiliary power unit to provide electrical power and heating and cooling via an independent HVAC system without the need to idle the main chassis engine. The Smeal pumpers, built on Spartan® Metro Star® chassis, each feature a 450-horspower Cummins ISL engine, 10-inch raised roof, Smeal QL-12 peer-to-peer multiplex electrical system, Hale Q-Max 1,500-gpm single-stage pump, FoamPro 2002 dual-agent foam system, and 500-gallon water tank. The 105-foot heavy-duty aerial, built on a Spartan Gladiator® chassis, is equipped with a Cummins ISX15 550-horsepower engine, five-inch raised roof, Hale Q-Max 1,500-gpm single-stage pump, FoamPro 2002 dual-agent foam system, and GREEN POWER technology. The aerial ladder is constructed of 100,000-psi steel and features Smeal's exclusive AL-11 aerial monitoring system, Fire Truck Leveling Assist (FTL), positional waterway, "creeper" controls at the tip, and six-function remote control for the monitor.

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SPARTAN ERV has been awarded an order for 20 units by the Sao Paulo (Brazil) Fire Department. Production for the order will begin immediately, with a scheduled completion date within the next year. All 20 units will be Spartan ERV custom pumpers built on Spartan Metro Star cabs and chassis featuring the Spartan Chassis Advanced Protection System® (APS) and equipped with Euro V emission standard engines and Allison transmissions. Each unit will feature Hale 1,250-gpm pumps with compressed air foam systems and 1,250-gallon water tanks.

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HALE PRODUCTS, INC. has hired Jon Kostyzak as its West Coast regional sales manager. Kostyzak will be based in Poway, California, and is responsible for the company's growth initiatives and providing support for Hale customers in the West Coast fire and rescue market segment. His territory includes California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, and Hawaii.

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PIERCE MANUFACTURING has delivered a Pierce® Velocity™ pumper to the Prince George's County (MD) Fire/EMS Department (PGFD) located in Largo, Maryland. Nicknamed "Courage" through a contest conducted through the department's social media outlets, it is one of six Pierce apparatus recently

Alan M. Petrillo

Bromley, Kentucky, is a small town of a half square mile with a fewer than 1,000-person population across the Ohio River from Cincinnati in Kenton County. One of the Bromley (KY) Fire Department's main concerns, in terms of fire protection, is the BP Bromley petroleum tank farm situated along the river at Highland Heights.

1 The Bromley (KY) Fire Department engaged Summit Fire Apparatus to build a 2,000-gallon foam tanker on a Sterling chassis with a 230-hp CAT engine an an Allison 3000 EVS automatic transmission, mainly for fire suppression at the nearby BP Bromley petroleum storage depot. (Photos courtesy of Summit Fire Apparatus.)

The Bromley Fire Department is an all-volunteer agency, fielding three dozen active firefighters running out of one station with two pumpers and a tanker to handle fire protection for the city, as well as covering the BP petroleum tank farm.

"The BP tank farm distributes petroleum products that come into the area through the river, where they pump it into the tank farm from barges and tankers and send that product out to the surrounding areas," says Donnie Jobe, chief of the Bromley Fire Department. "The BP facility is right along the river, and on the hill above it are eight tanks that each hold hundreds of thousands of gallons of product."

Jobe says that after the Gulf Coast oil spill that involved BP, the company performed safety audits on each of its facilities and found that the Bromley tank farm was inadequate in terms of fire suppression. "They had been considering adding a foam tanker for a number of years," Jobe says. "After the audit, they got together with us and we put them in touch with Summit Fire Apparatus, which came up with the design for the BP foam tanker."

Designing the Rig

Joe Messmer, president of Summit Fire Apparatus, says that the Bromley Fire Department is about "15 minutes away from our facility, and we've done a lot of work with BP internationally for industrial purposes, so this was a good relationship for us."

2 The Summit foam tanker built for Bromley carries its foam in a fiberglass elliptical tank and has a FoamPro AccuMax 90 multiport foam system installed at the rear of the vehicle.

Bromley had previously gone out to bid for a pumper in 2011, which was won by Summit, so there was a past connection too. The pumper is on a Freightliner chassis with a 315-hp Cummins engine, an Allison 3000 automatic transmission, a Hale 1,250-gallon-per-minute (gpm) pump, a 750-gallon fiberglass water tank, a Smart Power 6-kW generator, Whelen 600 series lights, a hydraulic ladder rack, and a double crosslay hosebed.

But, the foam tanker was destined to be much different. Messmer says

Murray Craig

1 This photo shows the line of bearing (LOB) from a single TigerStrike once the radio signal is detected. With multiple systems, the technology can automatically triangulate a signal. (Photo courtesy of Firestorm Emergency Services, Ltd.)

 

It is one of the scariest situations you can imagine: Your department is battling a structure fire when a firefighter calls, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," and the radio goes silent.

 

What happened? Where is he?

Without a second thought, the incident commander (IC) uses the command radio to activate the rescue beacon capability of the lost firefighter's radio. He then grabs two TigerStrike® systems, positions the system operators, and searches for the unique digital ID "ping" broadcast from the firefighter's radio. With the radio "ping" located, the IC initiates a rescue operation.

Every second counts.

Firestorm Emergency Services and the TigerStrike 4100 are ready to aid rescue and recovery operators to respond as quickly and accurately as possible.

This scenario is just as likely to occur in the wilderness fighting wildfires as it is fighting a house fire. At a wildfire, the amount of land and terrain covered creates unique difficulties. If the fire changes directions or flares up, teams of firefighters can be cut off from support and unable to be located. Although resources are in place to aid firefighters in this situation, such as air tankers, these resources cannot be used properly if the location of the firefighters is unknown. Without any action required by the firefighters, the TigerStrike can assist in locating their position and enable these additional resources to provide a protective cover until the firefighters can be evacuated.

Although TigerStrike can locate the digital ID ping discussed above, it can also locate a radio when the firefighter is broadcasting. This enables the TigerStrike to be used in virtually any rescue situation.

Background

From the 1940s to the 1990s, radio direction finding (RDF) was widely used by numerous industries from the military to aviation. However, since the introduction of global positioning systems (GPSs), there have been virtually no innovations in the RDF industry until the TigerStrike. For this reason, the majority of systems available are very large and heavy and do not include advanced software.

Since 2003, I have been heavily involved in search and rescue as a member of the Civil Air Patrol and with Emerald Bay Search & Rescue, where I participated in the Columbia Space Shuttle recovery in Nacadochuse, Texas. As I helped execute numerous searches with outdated technology, I thought, "I can make something better than this." From there, TigerStrike was developed.

Instead of following the common design of previous systems, the TigerStrike removed the "brains" of the system from the hardware and moved them into the artificial-intelligence-based software application. This enabled Firestorm to develop a light, handheld antenna array, which is highly accurate and very rugged.

The TigerStrike is a Firestorm patent-pending technology originally developed for civilian search and rescue (SAR). The TigerStrike family of phased-array antennas is designed for relatively narrow and specific frequency ranges-a separate phased-array boom with antennas is designed for a given radio frequency of intere

By Alan M. Petrillo

 

Platforms and ladders continue to dominate the aerial landscape for fire departments.

 

But around the country, some fire agencies find an articulating boom aerial to be a must-have piece of apparatus. Several types of articulating boom vehicles are produced today by various manufacturers, each having features that distinguish them and their use from traditional ladders and platforms.

Articulating boom products being offered today in the United States include the following:

• The Snozzle, made by Oshkosh and Pierce Manufacturing Inc.
• The T-Rex, manufactured by Rosenbauer.
• The Bronto Skylift, distributed by E-ONE.
• The Snorkel, made by Ladder Tower Company (LTC).
• The Telstar, a Gimaex product offered by Spartan ERV.

The Snozzle

Tim Smits, senior manager of national sales and product support for Pierce Manufacturing, says that since Oshkosh, Pierce's parent company, purchased the Snozzle high-reach extendable turret (HRET) product line in April 2011, it has been made in Appleton, Wisconsin, and used on Pierce's municipal and Oshkosh's airport products.

1 The Elizabeth (NJ) Fire Department bought a 65-foot Snozzle on a Pierce Manufacturing 2013 Arrow XT chassis with a 2,000-gpm pump, 700-gallon water tank, and 300-gallon foam cell. In addition to Class B foam, the vehicle also carries a 1,000-pound Purple K system. (Photo courtesy of Pierce Manufacturing Inc.)

"After we bought the Snozzle, we redesigned it and improved its functionality," Smits says. He adds that the Snozzle, which is available in 50- and 65-foot lengths, appeals to those in the municipal pumper market because it's a lightweight system that can be added to a single-axle vehicle. "It allows the customer to run a true pumper and have the ability for an elevated master stream," Smits points out. "We only need 21 inches of frame space to package the Snozzle, either in front of or in back of the pump house, which keeps the compartmentation the same and the hosebed intact."

Thomas P. Carle, sales support manager for Oshkosh Airport Products, says the tip of the HRET Snozzle that Oshkosh installs on its aircraft rescue and firefighting (ARFF) vehicles carries two discharges that can flow water or foam: an Akron fog and straight stream nozzle with a 750-gallon-per-minute (gpm) high flow rate and 375-gpm low flow rate and a piercing nozzle that flows 250 gpm. The HRET also has a tip-mounted color digital camera.

2 The Eagan (MN) Fire Department runs a 50-foot Snozzle on a 2012 Pierce Saber chassis, mounting a Waterous SD100D 1,500-gpm rear-mount pump, a 500-gallon water tank, a 20-gallon foam cell, and a Husky 12 foam system. (Photo courtesy of Pierce Manufacturing Inc.)

The articulating part of the Snozzle is made from two steel booms, with the second boom having an inner aluminum boom that t