HME Ahrens-Fox Delivers Three Type 3 WUI Engines to Kings County (CA) Fire Department

The Kings County (CA) Fire Department has a huge coverage area of 1,392 square miles one hour south of Fresno, covering the county, two unincorporated cities, and the two incorporated cities of Corcoran and Avenal, with a total population of 153,000.

But growth in the department’s rural areas, where farmland is being converted to massive solar energy farms with little in the way of roadways, meant the department needed to purchase several 4×4 Type 3 wildland urban interface (WUI) pumpers to cover the new potential hazards.

Joshua Cunningham, the department’s assistant chief, says Kings County had two Type 3 WUI rigs but needed to add three more to cover the county properly. “We have had eight solar facilities either building or built in our district, with the smallest being 700 acres and the largest about 5,000 acres,” Cunningham observes. “Our Type 1 engines would have a difficult time negotiating the rural road systems to those various solar facilities, so we knew we needed to add more Type 3 WUI engines to our fleet.”

James Demattei, president of Derotic Emergency Equipment, says the Kings County Fire Department came to him and ordered three Type 3 WUI engines, all identical, to handle the issue of the solar farms going up in the department’s coverage area. “They needed 4×4 capability for nonimproved roads, the ability to handle both structural and wildland fires, a foam system, and pump-and-roll capability,” Demattei points out. “That’s what we gave them with three HME Ahrens-Fox Model 34F WUI engines.”

The three rigs are on International HV507 4×4 commercial chassis and four-door cabs with seating for five firefighters, Demattei says. “The wheelbase on the rigs is 183 inches, so they can get into tight spots that a Type 1 engine could not,” he says. “Overall length is 26 feet 6 inches, and overall height is 9 feet 7 inches.”

Cunningham points out that the rigs have two 1¾-inch crosslays of 200 feet each above the 27-inch-wide modular pump module that has HME Ahrens-Fox’s Hydra Technology, two 2½-inch rear discharges (left and right), two 2½-inch front discharges (left and right), and 150 feet of ¾-inch hard rubber hose on a Hannay electric booster reel.

The hosebeds of the three WUI Type 3 engines each hold 800 feet of 3-inch supply line, 1,000 feet of single jacket 1½-inch hose, and 600 feet of 1-inch single jacket hose, Cunningham says. They are covered by a pair of hinged aluminum hosebed covers. “On the front bumper, we have 100 feet of single jacket 1½-inch hose as a vehicle protection line,” he notes, “and a 15-foot Stinger line of double-jacketed 1½-inch hose that’s used for mobile attack.”

Demattei points out the Type 3 WUI engines each have a Whelen LED warning light package, a Whelen LED traffic advisor, HiViz Maxxima LED scene lights and flood lights on the sides and the rear, three full-height pull-out tool boards in the L2 compartment, a backup camera, and a Federal EQ2B electronic siren.

Cunningham sums up what Kings County needed in its new WUI rigs: “We needed four-wheel drive, structural firefighting capability, wildland firefighting capability, and more firefighting power and water than our Type 6 engines could provide,” he says. “We were able to get exactly what we wanted and needed from HME Ahrens-Fox in our Type 3 WUI engines.”

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.