New township fire tanker called into action

TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
A new tanker truck acquired less than two weeks ago by the Polk Township Fire Protection District has already been deployed, rolling with its two-person crew to mutual aid calls involving structure fires in Elmo and Graham.

A $221,000 investment by the Polk Township Fire Protection District is already paying dividends.

A brand-new 3,000-gallon Toyne tanker truck recently purchased by the district had been parked in the Maryville Public Safety vehicle bay less than a week before it rolled out on its first call, a barn fire in Elmo last Sunday.

Then, two days later on Tuesday, the truck and its two-person crew responded to a second mutual-aid alarm in Graham, where several area crews were called in to fight a mobile home blaze.

Maryville Public Safety fire division Capt. Phil Rickabaugh said this week that such alarms out in the county are precisely why the truck was bought, and that the vehicle provides firefighters with a safer, more efficient means of transporting water to rural communities and farmsteads that lack fire hydrants.

Though technically separate agencies, Polk Township FPD and the Maryville Public Safety fire division often function as a single unit, and both are housed at the MPS headquarters in Maryville.

However, the departments own and maintain their own equipment and vehicles. In addition, Polk FPD has a separate revenue stream in the form of a property tax levy.

Assembled at Toyne Inc.’s production facility in Breda, Iowa, the 10-wheel pumper is built on a Freightliner chassis, sports dual rear axles and weighs in at around 15 tons.

Rickabaugh said the truck is fully compliant with National Fire Protection Association standards, and that special equipment includes computerized tilt and roll sensors designed to automatically stop or slow the rig when it is in danger of skidding or tipping over.

Other features embrace baffling inside the massive water tank that prevents sudden weight shifts when the truck is cornering.

The vehicle replaces another 3,000-gallon tanker acquired by the district about 20 years ago. That truck is currently for sale.

Rickabaugh described the difference between the two rigs as “night and day.”

Once on the scene of a fire, crews can put the new truck into action simply by activating a few switches and levers. Formerly, firefighters had to manually deploy a large plastic reservoir and fill it with water from the old tanker. The reservoir was then used to supply water to pumper trucks engaged in fighting the blaze.

The new truck’s system is similar, except that the reservoir deploys automatically and can be filled using a rear-mounted chute capable of dumping the tanker’s 3,000-gallon load in approximately two minutes.

Polk Township FPD maintains a fire protection fleet totaling three vehicles: the new tanker, a pumper truck and a smaller “brush truck” used to fight wildfires and purchased in partnership with Maryville Public Safety.

The city, which does not own a tanker, has two pumper trucks, a multi-story aerial truck, a second brush truck and a couple of auxiliary vehicles, including a pickup truck and an SUV.

Counting Rickabaugh, MPS has only two professional firefighters on staff, and Polk FPD has none.

Everybody else is a volunteer, and firefighters from the two agencies respond to both calls inside the city limits and within township boundaries, a square of land extending about five miles beyond Maryville in all four directions.

In the case of major fires, the organizations also have the option of answering mutual aid calls from fire protection districts and departments countywide.