Lebanon (MO) Fire Department had a 75-foot aerial ladder quint in its fleet that was approaching the time when the vehicle needed to be replaced. The department’s truck committee checked makers of quints in that size range and decided to go with the same brand as its previous rig.
“We were replacing a 2008 Smeal 75-foot aerial ladder quint that we had purchased as a new truck,” says Sam Schneider, Lebanon’s chief. “We were very happy with the Smeal product, it had served us well, and when it was approaching the end of its useful life, we decided to go back to Smeal for another 75-foot quint.”
Schneider points out that while the new 2022 Smeal aerial ladder quint is very similar to the 2008 model the department was retiring, it also has a number of upgrades and changes from that rig. “The new quint has knee and side airbags in the cab for the driver and officer,” he says, “an ultraviolet (UV) light disinfectant system in the air conditioning/heating unit, and foam capability through the aerial device because a railroad cuts our community in half and we felt the need to be able to apply foam in high volume.”
He adds, “We also removed the breathing air system from the tip of the aerial because we found that equipment was not being used, neither on our existing quint nor on our ladder tower, but continued with the ergonomic, electric-over-hydraulic hose bed that deploys at waist height and holds 700-feet of 5-inch LDH (large diameter hose). We are fortunate to have an ISO-rated (Insurance Services Office) Class 1 hydrant system that is very robust and supplies us a lot of water from hydrants spaced every 500 to 600 feet apart.”
Lloyd De Wald, vice president and service manager for Leo M. Ellebracht Company, who sold the quint to Lebanon, says the 75-foot aerial ladder quint that Smeal built for Lebanon is on a Spartan Gladiator chassis and long four-door cab with a 10-inch raised roof, powered by a Cummins 500-horsepower (hp) X12 diesel engine, and an Allison 4000 EVS automatic transmission.
De Wald notes the quint has a Waterous CSUC20 2,000-gallon per minute (gpm) pump, an UPF Poly 300-gallon water tank, a 50-gallon foam cell, and a FoamPro 2002 Class B foam proportioning system.
Schneider notes that the quint has two 200-foot attack lines of 1-3/4-inch hose in the rear bumper, 100-feet of 1-3/4-inch hose in a hose well in the front bumper, a length of 3-inch dead lay above the pump panel, a booster reel in the officer’s side dunnage area that holds 100-feet of one-inch redline hose, and an Akron Brass Company 1,250-gpm monitor and nozzle at the tip of the ladder that can be operated remotely from fog to straight stream. The aerial device itself also can be remotely controlled, he adds.
Besides the new Smeal 75-foot aerial ladder platform, Lebanon also runs a Smeal 100-foot aerial platform, two Smeal engines, a brush truck and a heavy rescue out of three stations staffed by 25 paid full-time firefighters. The department protects the city of Lebanon of 14 square miles and 15,000 population, with a concentration of heavy manufacturing by boat companies, an air conditioning compressor company, 5,000 residential structures, and Interstate 44 running through the city, as well as state highways 64 and 65 and a railroad.
ALAN M. PETRILLO is a Tucson, Ariz.-based journalist, the author of three novels and five non-fiction books, and a member of the Fire Apparatus & Emergency Equipment editorial advisory board. He served 22 years with Verdoy (NY) Fire Department, including the position of chief.
