Doty said the front of the truck has a city of Rio Rancho Firefighter union number. The truck also has a Rio Rancho Firefighter sticker on the back window and New Mexico license plate FF5121.

"We were surprised, but this is the fourth vehicle in the last year, either F-150 or F-250, from one of our firefighters that had been stolen," said Doty.

However, this time it's different. Not only was the truck stolen, but thousands of dollars' worth of specialty department rescue gear inside went with it.

Doty said that firefighter unit is part of the technical rescue crew. These crews respond to any high angle or low angle rescues and rope rescues, along with trench and structural collapse rescues.

Those firefighters keep their gear in the car so they can respond quickly to the appropriate location.

“Even the engine throttle is an electric push-button affair,” said fire Chief Kevin Tappe, going over the vehicle’s features.

He explained to The Press that Class B foam is necessary for flammable liquid fires — such as gasoline, diesel fuel or oil —  and that Class A foam is a wetting agent that reduces the surface tension of water, allowing it to penetrate objects deeper and thus extinguish fire faster in combustibles like wood, paper and furniture.  

“This is important for us, since we respond with very limited staffing and must do more with less,” he said. “The fire pump is a 1,500-gallon-per-minute pump.”

The rescue-pumper will be located at the department’s Ridgebury station and is equipped to handle that terrain better than a lot of its predecessors.

“Even in Ridgebury, where there is no Verizon signal, we have built-in cell phone extenders in the new engine in order to reach hard-to-access cell locations,” Chief Tappe said.

“Another technology addition is the use of iPads on all of our apparatus to store water source locations, pre-plans, and Knox-Box locations,” he said.

Seeing double

Tappe said the new No. 2 engine was built to resemble “as closely as possible” the department’s No. 1 engine at fire headquarters on Catoonah Street.

According to the chief, this helps