The Marlborough Fire Department provides fire suppression, rescue, and emergency medical services (EMS) to 6,358 residents in 23.4 square miles of the town of Marlborough in Hartford County. The department operates from two fire stations with two engines, two tankers, a rescue, a hose tender, a Polaris utility terrain vehicle (UTV) and an ambulance.
Jim Feehan, president of New England Fire Equipment & Apparatus, who sold a new Rescue 1 heavy rescue to Marlborough, says the department had a 1999 rescue truck that wasn’t fitting its needs. “It was a rescue built on a smaller International chassis with a crew cab that had three seating positions across the rear wall, which displaced a lot of storage compartment capability that the department needed,” Feehan points out. “The fire department was getting a lot of rescue calls on Route 9 through their district and had to perform a lot more rescue functions, but the smaller compartments on their rescue truck inhibited their ability to run the best possible rescues.”
Feehan says that switching to a Rescue 1 heavy rescue truck on a custom cab allowed the department to outfit the front of the cab with more firefighters in self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) seats, and increase the non-walk-in storage areas in the rear of the body. “The new rescue also has a stairway to the roof with storage underneath,” he notes.
Chad Newsome, national sales manager for Rescue 1, says the Marlborough heavy rescue is built on a Spartan Metro Star chassis and medium four-door (MFD) cab with seating for six firefighters, five of them in H.O. Bostrom Durawear-Plus™ covered seats with two forward facing and two rear facing seats in the crew cab.
The rig is powered by a 450-horsepower (hp) Cummins diesel engine, and an Allison 3000 EVS automatic transmission, Newsom points out, and has a 20-foot walk-around rescue body constructed of heavy duty extruded aluminum, an overall length of 33 feet, 8 inches, an overall height of 9 feet, 8 inches, and a wheelbase of 150 inches.
The heavy rescue has nine custom designed compartments, an hydraulic operated rear staircase with a FinishMaster polyurethane coating, four coffin compartments, an Onan 35-kW generator, two electric cord reels, and a Will-Burt Night Scan 15-foot light tower.
Feehan points out that the increased storage space on the Rescue 1 heavy rescue truck gave the fire department the ability to store their equipment properly on the rig. “We did a lot of tool mounting on this truck,” he says. “Every item has its proper place and brackets on slide-out and drop-down trays, and on slide-out and swing-out tool boards.”
The fire department chose a complete blackout package on the new rescue truck, Feehan says. “Even the light bezels are blacked out,” he observes, “so everything on the truck is either black or red. There’s no chrome, so that means it’s a much lower maintenance truck because you don’t have to shine any chrome.”
Firefighter safety on the scene also was important to the fire department, Feehan observes. “We designed a lighting package of Whelen LED warning and scene lighting, which along with the Will-Burt Night Scan light tower, give firefighters plenty of lighting to protect them on fire scenes.”
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.
