By Ricky Riley
In the First State of Delaware, there are only three counties.
The northernmost is New Castle County, which encompasses an estimated 494 square miles and is bordered by the Delaware River, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. The county is home to more than 500,000 residents and is served by 21 volunteer fire departments and the only all-career department in the state—the Wilmington (DE) Fire Department. Each fire department is its own individual entity and corporation. The units are all dispatched by the New Castle County 911 Center, and they all operate on shared and common radio channels. It is a very busy county, answering well over 100,000 calls for fire and emergency medical service. With the number of people who live in the county and those who transit through it on major interstates, the potential for a major incident is a daily threat.
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| 1 Engine 13 has a rear hosebed height of 64 inches. (Photos by author unless otherwise noted.) |
New Castle County has been well known for many years for its unique rigs that vary in size, type, and color. Each corporation has its own operational needs, tank requirements, hose loads, and aerial necessities based on its response area. As the county has grown over the past decade and the population has increased, the needs and response requirements have slowly started to mesh together for all the departments. This increase in density and population and the ever-growing call volume has resulted in an interesting thing happening with apparatus purchases.
In the past couple of years, a number of departments’ apparatus reached the end of their life expectancy. This started a round of purchasing for engine companies across the county. I like to keep an eye on New Castle County and have listened to many of its working incidents via the Internet. I’m also fortunate to have a number of friends in New Castle County departments. In communicating with them, I’ve noticed an interesting trend for apparatus purchases in the county. These engine purchase patterns involve many similar units with the same operational options. In my terms, they were buying engines to do engine work.
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| 2 A short 181.50-inch wheelbase makes this unit much more maneuverable in its response area. |
In the past, some departments were buying crew carriers that might have some hose and some water on them or a multipurpose unit with no clear identity. Buying a standard engine with a lot of seats, high hosebeds, crosslays out of reach, tons of compartment space, and attention focused on riding in comfort rather than operations has come to an end in the region. Thoughtful planning and rigs designed to lay supply lines, run attack lines, and support the operation of getting water on the fire are in full force in New Castle County.
This change was reinforced by a number of the departments working collaboratively on a number of areas such as joint training classes, offering multicompany drills on acquired structures, and a productive chiefs council. The foundation was set for an understanding of operational fireground strategies and how companies were to operate on automatic aid structure assignments