CARROT RIVER — Carrot River’s new fire truck, a custom made $485,000 Rosenbauer FX GM pumper, has arrived and is expected to take minutes off the crew’s preparation time for fire calls.
The pumper, assembled on a 2020 international HV507 four-wheel drive chassis, had its features custom selected by the town’s fire chief Bryce Lytle.
These include a front mounted bumper turret for extinguishing wildfires, a rear compartment booster reel, and a top mounted enclosed pumper with a 1,250 gallons per minute pump with a FoamPro 1,600 straight injection foam system.
One feature that’s expected to save time responding to fires is the truck’s self-contained SCBA breathing apparatuses.
Comparing it to their old truck, Lytle said it’s “night and day.”
“The old truck didn’t contain any self-contained breathing apparatus packs because of the style and the year, it wasn’t as common as it is now,” Lytle said. “With the old truck, because there were no packs, we primarily had to take a pack off one of those other trucks to outfit members that responded on that.”
Their retired 1992 pumper had enough seating for three crew members, which was further limited to two due to the gear shift layout.
The new truck can accommodate five crew members.
“We’re saving crucial minutes at the beginning of the call because as soon as we pull up on scene with this truck we’re already ready to go,” he said.
“The old truck didn’t have a foam system, it didn’t have a bumper turret, it didn’t have the hard booster line as well as just compartment space.”
The foam system assists the department with fighting ordinary solid combustibles such as paper, wood, cloth and some plastics.
“When using it you inject the foam into the water and then that foam breaks up the surface tension of the water, allowing our water to actually penetrate further into ordinary combustibles. On your regular wood, wildland fires the ability to break up that surface tension allows us to get the water further down to the seed of the fire to actually extinguish it.”
The retired pumper will be sold by the town.
