The Parshall (ND) Rural Fire Protection District covers a lot of territory—about 400 square miles in parts of North Dakota’s McLean and Mountrail Counties, including the city of Parshall, but with most of its coverage area not served by pressurized water systems.

When the department decided to replace its oldest pumper, it chose to spec a pumper-tanker that could handle fire suppression as well as serve as a large source of water wherever needed.

Kurt Clemensen, Parshall Rural Fire Protection District chief, says the fire district is located on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in Mountrail County and on the eastern border of the Parshall Oil Field. “Our district is very rural,” Clemensen observes, “and while the city of Parshall has a mix of commercial and residential structures and a hydrant system, and some rural water systems have a few hydrants, most of the area we cover does not, which means we have to haul water with us or get it out at the scene from static sources.”

Types of structures and facilities in the department’s coverage area include multiple petroleum storage tank farms; commercial and residential structures; industrial facilities for the oil industry; residential subdivisions along Lake Sakakawea on the Missouri River; multiple gasoline and oil pipelines; anhydrous ammonia filling stations; grain elevators; and a railroad running through the district that carries fertilizer, oil, chemical, and grain rail cars.

“Our single-station department covers all that with 17 volunteer firefighters,” Clemensen notes. Other apparatus in the department’s fleet, besides the new Midwest Fire pumper-tanker, include a 2011 Rosenbauer pumper with a 1,250-gallon-per-minute (gpm) pump and a 1,000-gallon water tank; a 1992 tanker (tender) with a 350-gpm pump and a 4,500-gallon water tank; a Rosenbauer-Heiman Fire Ford F-450 initial response truck with a 250-gpm pump and a 400-gallon water tank; a Danko Ford F-450 quick-response truck with a 250-gpm pump and a 400-gallon water tank; two Danko Ford F-450 wildland units, each with a 250-gpm pump and a 400-gallon water tank; an M&T Fire Polaris Ranger utility terrain vehicle (UTV) with a high-pressure pump, an 80-gallon water tank, and a five-gallon foam tank; and a 2014 Ford-F550 rescue truck.