Many fire departments and districts around the country have technical rescue vehicles and tractor-drawn trailers to handle specialized rescue situations that go beyond the capabilities of a traditional rescue truck.
By Alan M. Petrillo
Technical rescue trucks often carry collapse and trench rescue equipment, urban search and rescue (USAR) gear, hazmat gear, high-angle rescue equipment, water rescue and dive gear, or an assortment of those types of equipment needed for specific disciplines.
Although the latest technical rescue rigs being built are used by departments and municipal task forces across United States and from the Canadian to the Mexican borders, the equipment they are carrying and their specific missions vary by locality.
Kevin Arnold, rescue and specialty vehicle product manager for Ferrara Fire Apparatus, points out that technical rescue vehicles are usually very different from each other. "It might be a USAR truck, hazardous materials truck, a command vehicle, dive truck, or a combination of those that define its mission," he says, "but in the end it still is pretty much a big rescue vehicle-a specialized toolbox on wheels."
Disaster Response
Arnold says that technical rescue vehicles often are designed to respond to natural disasters. "Their use seems to revolve around disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, and flooding conditions," Arnold says. "After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, departments and fire districts went wild buying technical rescues and command trailers."
Arnold points out that technical rescue vehicles can be either self-propelled or tractor-drawn trailers, and the type purchased by a fire department or municipal entity depends on how the vehicle will be used. "Typically, a technical rescue vehicle will sit somewhere and not be used a lot," Arnold observes. "So, many fire departments choose to base their technical rescue equipment in a trailer that will sit for a while until needed yet can be pulled by a variety of vehicles."
Slide-Outs
Ferrara built a technical rescue vehicle for San Francisco, California, Arnold says, that doubles as the mayor's mobile command center, complete with several slide-out sections. For Louisiana's homeland security agency in West Baton Rouge, Ferrara built a technical rescue on a tandem-axle Freightliner chassis that also duplicates the agency's dispatch center in the truck with three slide-out sections, Arnold says.
Slide-out sections are popular in combination technical rescue and command vehicles, says Scott Oyen, vice president of sales for Rosenbauer. "Technical rescues need a lot of storage room to haul all the equipment that departments want to put on them," Oyen says. "When there's a command center built into the vehicle, you need the slide-outs in order to provide the space necessary for them to function. We're building a technical rescue and command vehicle right now that has the incident command inside with four slide-out sections and a lot of electronics gear, while the technical rescue equipment is stowed in compartments around the outside of the vehicle."
Equipped for All Hazards
Oyen notes that Rosenb