The Los Pinos (CO) Fire Protection District wanted to replace a 1986 pumper outfitted like a Type 3 engine with a dual-purpose engine to be housed in its dedicated wildland station, Station 5.

The apparatus committee visited neighboring departments and talked about the apparatus they had of a similar type and then talked with several vendors about their wildland products and how they might work in Los Pinos. The end result, says John Gilbert, Los Pinos’s captain who was on the apparatus committee, was that HME gave the district the best product at the best price.

The Process

Gilbert says the committee got the Model 34D CAL FIRE specs, which he characterized as “well-detailed and very involved specs. We got them from HME and, after reviewing them, decided to keep all the major components on the truck but wanted to change a few things.”

What attracted Los Pinos to the Model 34D Type 3, Gilbert points out, was its need for pump-and-roll capability and the ability to mount a 750-gallon-per-minute (gpm) midship pump that would classify the vehicle as an attack engine for structural firefighting by the Insurance Services Office. “We liked the Darley 1.5AGE 150-gpm auxiliary pump for pump-and-roll and went with a Darley LSPH-750 two-stage 750-gpm power takeoff (PTO) pump for the midship pump with a water tank of 750 gallons.”

Gilbert notes that changes the committee made to the specs included adding some