KME has delivered a second tractor-drawn aerial (TDA) to Summerville (SC) Fire Rescue, two years after the first KME-built TDA arrived in town.
The rig is what Cameron Marler, apparatus sales representative for Safe Industries, who sold the TDA to Summerville, calls a “true truck, a straight TDA with no pump and no tank.” The 101-foot AerialCat™ TDA is built on a KME SSX™ LFD (long four door) cab and chassis with a 10-inch raised roof and seating for six firefighters, five of them in H.O. Bostrom Series 550 SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) seats, an AXIS Smart Truck Vehicle Monitoring System, a 101-foot Steel-Safe™ aerial ladder, and an EZ-MRS™ Aerial Maintenance Reduction system.
Overall length on the TDA is 58 feet 5 inches, overall height is 11 feet 5 inches, with a tractor wheelbase of 162 inches, and a trailer wheelbase of 343 inches. The front axle has a gross axle rating of 22,000 pounds, the tractor’s rear axle rates at 31,000 pounds, and the trailer axle has a rating of 23,000 pounds, Marler points out. The rig has a Steertek NXT front axle assembly, and is powered by a Cummins 656-horsepower (hp) X 15 diesel engine, and an Allison 4500 EVS automatic transmission.
Jason Behler, KME sales application engineer, says the Summerville TDA has a 101-foot vertical reach, a 94-foot horizontal reach, a 2.5 to 1 structural safety factor, a 500-pound unrestricted tip load, a 14-foot outrigger stance, a minus-7 degrees to plus 80-degrees elevation range, and a 7-inch display at the control console. The tiller cab features a no post windshield, he notes, and a green light on top of the body is visible from the tiller cab for better tiller operator orientation.
Roger Wnek, Summerville’s maintenance coordinator, says Summerville covers a population of 52,500 people from five fire stations staffed by paid firefighters and a small number of volunteers running five engines, two TDAs, a light/air heavy rescue hazardous materials unit, and BLS ambulance units, with three engines and a Sutphen aerial platform in reserve. “We’re the seventh largest city in South Carolina, being an outlying suburb of the city of Charleston,” Wnek said. “We cover three counties — Dorchester, Berkley and Charleston, and serve 19,000 households spread over 18 square miles of agricultural, woodland, open space, residential, commercial and industrial areas.”
Wnek notes that with the strip malls, plazas and commercial businesses in town, the TDA is optimal for positioning and navigating through the sometimes tight quarters. “The TDA turns much better than a straight body chassis aerial,” he said. “Also, there’s less wear and tear on suspensions and brakes, and with the 14-foot jack spread, if we can open the doors on the vehicle, then we know that’s as far as the jack spread sits. It gets us into tighter spaces, and also improves the scrub zone.”
He says that the TDA also runs on all rescues and MVAs (motor vehicle accidents) in the fire district. “We carry battery-powered Holmatro hydraulic rescue tools on the TDA, which take up less compartment space than hosed hydraulic tools, give us better performance and cutting force, and can be easily transferred to another truck if the first one goes out of service,” Wnek said. “We also use the TDA to respond to structural collapse calls for its heavy lift and stabilization capabilities, for high and low angle rescue calls, and when we need to breach or stabilize a structure on a scene. It’s our rolling tool box that allows us a lot of room for storage and to accomplish fire suppression and rescue in one unit.”
Behler points out that the Summerville TDA has a 90-degree jack knife capability, a custom prepiped waterway with an Elkhart Brass Company X-Treme store front blitz monitor that can fire 30 degrees above horizontal from the tip of the ladder. He says the rig has ROM painted roll-up doors, driver’s side and officer’s side SCBA cylinder fender storage, a Harrison PTO/HYD 10-kilowatt generator, a CMW dual air reel, dual electric cord reels, a Whelen LED emergency lighting package, and Hi Viz LED scene lighting.
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.
