• SMEAL has announced that the Charlotte (NC) Fire Department's Ladder 23 achieved the milestone of responding to 40,423 calls in 10 years. The Smeal-built 105-foot rear-mount aerial ladder drove 177,000 miles-enough to travel around the world seven times. During that time, Ladder 23 has been through 1,890 gallons of oil, 158 tires, and 76,542 gallons of diesel fuel but only had 34 aerial-related work orders during the ten-year span.

Captain Buddy Caldwell, of the Charlotte Fire Department, sums up the value of a reliable vehicle this way: "A truck is the firefighters' life for 24 hours when on shift. They trust that truck to be dependable, to get them to every call, and to function the way it's supposed to function when they get there. It's an integral part of their job. And it's all got to work."

The truck is now in reserve status and was replaced by a new 2012 Smeal 105-foot rear-mount aerial.

• GLOBE, DUPONT, and the NATIONAL VOLUNTEER FIRE COUNCIL (NVFC) have teamed up again to provide new gear to volunteer fire departments in need. The application period is now open for eligible departments to apply for up to four sets of gear. Up to 52 sets will be given away in 2013.

To celebrate the company's 125th anniversary and say thank you to firefighters who dedicate themselves to protecting their communities, Globe partnered with DuPont and the NVFC in 2012 to launch a gear donation program. In all, 16 departments in the United States and Canada were awarded a total of 144 sets of gear.

To be eligible to apply for a gear donation, departments must be all-volunteer, serve a population of 25,000 or less, be located in the United States or Canada and legally organized under state law, and be a department or individual member of the NVFC. Find full program criteria and apply at www.nvfc.org/globe-gear-donation. Applications are due by June 30, 2013.

• MIAMI-DADE (FL) FIRE RESCUE'S Training Division recently took delivery of a Doron 660 Driver Simulator. This technology will allow firefighters to enhance their driving skills as well as increase their confidence when operating a fire engine.

The Doron 660 can simulate 102 different computer-generated scenarios and will allow the instructor to modify and customize each one via a computer console. The simulator is encased in a life-size fire apparatus shell, which is fully equipped with lights and sirens. Firefighters can respond to situations ranging from driving in the rain at night to a barn fire to responding to a plane crash on a busy highway in the snow. The simulator can also test braking reaction times and evasion maneuvers. The new simulator will allow drivers to operate a fire apparatus in a controlled, safe environment without the fuel consumption and wear and tear that come with training on the road.

• E-ONE announces that members of the Guil-Rand (NC) Fire Department and board of directors recently signed a contract for three new custom eMAX pumpers on Typhoon® chassis. "For years our department has survived by purchasing good, quality used apparatus, and we searched for two years before deciding to purchase new apparatus," says Brian Cox, Guil-Rand's chief. "These will be our first new trucks since 1996." Each new eMAX will feature a 780-gallon water tank, 1,500-gpm pump, 6-kW generator, Cummins® ISL 450-hp engine, enclosed ladder tunnel storage, dual canopy medical ca

W. Parker Browne

It's a given that suburban and rural fire departments that routinely draft from folding tanks or other static sources must have well-trained pump operators. I have learned during fire pump operations and drafting water from a static source instruction that priming the centrifugal fire pump is generally one of the most challenging and hardest tasks for the student to understand and master. Automatic priming offers ease of operation when priming a centrifugal pump.

Automatic priming was a standard feature and natural benefit for fire pumps installed in most of the early fire trucks built in the United States. These fire pumps were typically positive displacement, either piston or rotary type. Positive displacement fire pumps were truly self-priming because they were able to pump both air and water. The operator just connected a suction line from the pump to the water source, engaged the pump, opened a discharge, and waited for the air to pass through the pump and then for the water to flow. It was that simple.

If the pump swallowed some air during operation because of turbulence at the entrance to the hose, or even a slow leak in the hose itself, the fire pump would move air through and continue to provide water pressure as long as the pump was running and the water supply lasted. With the advent of the centrifugal pump, manufacturers had to find another way to prime because the centrifugal pump cannot move both water and air. When the centrifugal pump came into common use, so did the primer.

(1) The simplicity of the air-powered primer design is in its ability to create a high vacuum without the use of moving parts or high electrical current draw. Passing the pressurized air through a series of nozzles creates the vacuum. The reliability of a product that has no moving parts and is powered by a vehicle system as carefully engineered and maintained as the air brakes has led to the air-powered primer's growing use on new vehicles as well as its retrofit popularity on older vehicles equipped with air brakes. (Photos and illustrations courtesy of Trident Emergency Products, LLC.)

Conventional Priming

A conventional primer is a small vacuum-producing pump that can remove the air from the suction hose and pump. Since the primer's inception, the pump operator has been required to activate it manually, which can lead to problems if the operator is not trained in its use. If it is shut off too soon, the prime can be lost-if left running too long, the primer can burn out its vanes and seals.

Across the ocean, European fire truck builders also use the centrifugal-style pump. However for the past several decades, they have been providing many of their pumps with an automatic priming feature. Their approach also uses a separate small positive displacement priming pump, but the primer is automatically engaged whenever the pump shaft is rotating and it senses little or no discharge pressure.

Although this approach is not quite as simple as using a truly self-priming water pump, it does automatically tie the separate primer's operation to the water pump's discharge pressure status. The Godiva, Rosenbauer, and Ziegler brands all have fire pumps available with automatic priming.

As the world grows smaller, many of the more useful ideas for firefighting techniques and equipment are crossing the oceans in all directions. The automatic priming idea for centrifugal fire pumps is one of these and makes perfect sense on any fire truck for several reasons:

• It is simple and makes the pump operator's job easier, allowing time for other tasks.
• It will automatically remove any

Accurate information is not only important on the fire ground and the pre-hospital setting; it is paramount to the timely and safe repair of fire department vehicles. For that reason it is important to discuss this topic in detail explaining some of the common issues fire department mechanics face. The security of our careers as mechanics in the fire service relies on the ability to provide confident repairs that follow the manufacturer specification.  With so much riding on our work, we must be able to access the information we seek in a timely manner...

Alan M. Petrillo

The Bakersfield (CA) Fire Department covers a wide swath of territory within the Bakersfield, California, city limits-144 square miles with a population of more than 347,000 people-with 180 firefighters working 14 pumpers, three ladder trucks, and a variety of other apparatus out of 14 stations. So, fleet uniformity is an important consideration to Bakersfield's officers and firefighters when specing out new apparatus.

Early in 2012, the department pulled out its pumper specifications and sought input from a number of sources-firefighters, mechanics, and officers-about the good and not-so-good working features of its current apparatus to prepare for a new engine purchase.

Ross Kelly, Bakersfield's deputy chief, says uniformity with the department's existing fleet of pumpers was a concern voiced often. "We took ideas from the pumpers currently in our fleet and looked to improve on some things that weren't working well but still stay in a configuration that we are used to dealing with," Kelly said. "We wanted to keep the body and setup of the equipment on the new pumper as uniform as we could compared with the other pumpers in our fleet."

(1) Uniformity with its other fleet pumpers was a chief concern at the Bakersfield (CA) Fire Department. The KME Severe Service pumper it chose has a Waterous 1,500-gpm pump, 750-gallon water tank, and 20-gallon foam cell. It also features a six-person XMFD cab extended to 59½ inches long to give the crew more space for both structural and wildland firefighting gear. (Photos courtesy of KME.)

Kelly says the department also considered the geography of the coverage area of the station where the new apparatus would be housed in choosing its new pumper. "The station where it was going is mostly hilly in the first-in response areas, so we were looking at strong braking power as well as the angles of approach and departure on the new vehicle," he points out.

Kelly says the input received from department members was included in the specs, which they sent out for bid. Five fire apparatus manufacturers responded to the department's request for bids, and the department chose KME to build the new pumper.

"The finished pumper has some things in different places than our other pumpers, but there was no compromising the basic setup, so it's very similar to our other apparatus," Kelly points out.

(2) The new pumper's hosebed carries 1,700 feet of 2½-inch hose, 600 feet of four-inch LDH, and 300 feet of 1¾-inch hose, all under a hard top cover.

Standard Design

Dean Carriger, the KME salesman who submitted the winning bid, says the Bakersfield pumper is built on a Severe Service chassis, a model KME developed about eight years ago for the Los Angeles County (CA) Fire Department. "The Severe Service line became so popular that it's our premier seller on the West Coast," Carriger says. "It's noted for its durability, unobstructed vision, and having the biggest air-conditioning system available in the fire service. It's all aluminum, including the cab and frame rails, so the design makes for a minimum amount of maintenance."

The XMFD cab that Bakersfield chose is extended to 59½ inches, which Carriger notes "gives the firefighters in the crew cab section more room for their turnout and wildlan