The Lino Lakes, Minnesota Public Safety Department’s Fire Division covers an area of 33 square miles of predominantly suburban and rural areas, located approximately 15 minutes north of St. Paul. Two stations, with two full-time paid firefighters and 26 paid and on-call cross-trained firefighter/police officers, make up the coverage.
Dan L’Allier, the division’s deputy director, says the rural area outside the city of Centerville “is very strained for hydrants. There’s a large county park with multiple lakes in the middle of Centerville, and in the suburban areas there’s a hydrant every 300 feet, but outside of those areas hydrants might be a mile apart. With those considerations in mind, we chose CustomFIRE to build two new pumper-tenders (tankers) for us.”
Wayde Kirvida, sales engineer for CustomFIRE, says the identical pumper-tenders are built on a Spartan Gladiator chassis and cab with seating for five firefighters, four of them in self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) seats, powered by a 525-horsepower (hp) Cummins X12 engine, and an Allison 4500 EVS automatic transmission. Each pumper-tender has a stainless steel sub-frame, a stainless steel concealed bolted body, and a 74,000-pound gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR).
Kirvida points out that each pumper-tender has a 2,000-gallon-per-minute (gpm) Waterous CSU-C20 midship mounted pump with the pump panel in the enclosed cab, a 2,200-gallon UPF Poly® water tank, a 20-gallon foam cell, a FoamPro 2001 single agent foam system, a Darley 300-gpm auxiliary pump for pump and roll, a Waterous VPO pump primer, and a Fire Research PumpBoss pressure governor.
L’Allier notes that the district didn’t want to give up the real estate necessary to have dump chutes on the pumper-tankers, so each rig has three 6-inch discharges that allow the 2,200 gallons of water it carries to be pumped into a portable tank in three minutes. He says each pumper-tender has a Task Force Tips deck gun, 100 feet of 1-3/4-inch hose preconnected in a hose well in the extended front bumper, two 200-foot 1-3/4-inch hose crosslays above the pump panel, and four 2-1/2-inch discharges.
Other features on each pumper-tender, L’Allier says, include a hot water decon line connected to a 3/4-inch hose and nozzle, a speedy-dry hopper and spare SCBA bottles in the wheel wells, ROM roll-up doors on the compartments, a ROM powered roll-up hosebed cover, a Harrison 6.0MAS 6-kW hydraulic generator, a power rewind electric cord reel, a tip-out rescue tool storage tray holding a TNT Rescue Systems spreader and cutter, a camera system with one-way communication, a drop down ladder rack on the right side, a 2,500-gallon portable water tank in a drop down rack on the left side, and a swing-out and down rear access ladder.
Emergency warning devices on the pumper-tenders include Hadley E-Tone air horns, a Whelen electronic siren and speakers, a Whelen Freedom IV LED lightbar, Whelen LED emergency and scene lighting, a RotoRay light, under chassis and underbody lighting, LED vertical strip compartment lighting, and Whelen LED traffic directing lights.
ALAN M. PETRILLO is a Tucson, Arizona-based journalist, the author of three novels and five nonfiction books, and a member of the Fire Apparatus & Emergency Equipment Editorial Advisory Board. He served 22 years with the Verdoy (NY) Fire Department, including in the position of chief.
