Tower 1 is officially on duty!

She is a thing of beauty! The Whitecourt Fire Department officially put its brand new truck, Tower 1, into service on December 7. The wait has been over a year for the department, and throughout the whole process, they have had a bird’s eye view as Pierce Manufacturing provided weekly updates. Fire Chief Brian Wynn was a big part of the engineering and helped create the community’s perfect engine. Tower 1 can extend 100 feet up and can grow 93 feet horizontally. The beast can deal with various situations allowing firefighters to reach hard-to-access spots without putting members in harm’s way.

“This truck is the first of its kind from Pierce. It is a mid-mount with a five-section ladder. It is about 10 feet shorter than typical aerial trucks. It’s a totally new design and is a game-changer in aerials.” He said that aerial fire trucks are usually quite long and tend to have the bucket hanging off the front. “That impairs the vision of the driver 100 percent of the time, and I didn’t want to have that. So, this mid-mount, the bucket is at the back, so it does not impede the driver’s vision. Then, because it is a five-section ladder, it’s also shorter, so that makes the whole thing a bit shorter. It’s an engineering game-changer, I would say,” explained Chief Wynn.

Not only did he specify the most significant parts of the truck, but he also worked with the company to make the inside of the cab, particular to their needs. “I wanted to have the same cab as our rescue truck because they normally would come with a different cab, but I wanted it the same for operational use. We can have up to 20 different people driving this truck, and you are just asking for trouble if the buttons are not in the same spot. When you are driving it, it’s always in an emergency situation, so familiarity and standardization are critical.” He said that aside from the aerial and the pumps’ added controls, every button is in the same spot.

Not only can the truck do tricks with the ladder, but it can also do all the things that regular fire trucks can do. “It is a 2000 gallon a minute pump. We can actually pump more than 2000 gallons a minute when we hook it up to a hydrant, and we can have another truck pump into it as well, too.” In a location such as Millar Western, Chief Wynn said they could get up to 3000 gallons a minute out of the truck because of the higher hydrant pressure. “It’s a ton of water.” A neat thing about the pumps is they can pump over what they are rated for due to how they are tested. “They test them from drafting out of a six-foot water source. It is harder to pump when you are sucking the water at the same time. When you are pumping, and the water is supplied with pressure, the pump will exceed it’s rated capacity.”

Having the ability to bring that stream of water up onto the bucket and shoot it down at a fire will be all the difference for the local department. “Not only can you apply water from a higher elevation, but you also have a visual of what’s going on in the fire. For the pet store fire (KW Pets), we had to put firefighters on each adjacent building’s roof. We would not have to do that now. We would just put them up in the basket and not have to have anybody on the roof anymore,” explained Chief Wynn.

Though Tower 1 has not had a chance to show off her abilities just yet, Chief Wynn said he is looking forward to the day that the truck proves why it was the right purchase for the community. “It’s hard to fight a structure fire from the ground when the fire is above you. Any second story structure like an apartment building fire or any high rise fire such as the log decks at Millar Western, we couldn’t reach that until we had the tower truck.”

With the growth of Whitecourt’s apartment buildings over the last decade, the tower truck will be ready should a fire ever happen inside a unit. “We can get right up to the apartment window and blast it and maybe not even put anybody inside the building. As long as that apartment is sealed on the inside, we can blast it from the bucket.” He said that sending firefighters into a building like that is very risky. “It’s the wind tunnel effect. If you have an outside patio door open and open the door to gain access to the apartment hallway, that hallway ends up becoming a chimney for the fire to get out. Many firefighters have died that way,” he said. “The tower truck can give a better outcome and better safety for the firefighters.”

Tower 1 is a six-man truck compared to their other engine, which holds five. That might not seem like a big difference but as Chief Wynn explained, having that extra person is really important, especially if it’s the first truck on scene. “If we are hooking to a hydrant, then one person is doing that, and another is hooking the hose to the truck. The person driving is the pump operator, and the other person in the front is the officer, leaving two firefighters to get on a handline and start firefighting right away. It’s simply better and safer with six.”

Another thing that makes this truck unique is that it has a foam system that goes right up to the bucket’s top. “We asked for it, specifically. If you are wetting a roof and putting thousands of gallons of water up there each minute, you can get too much weight on the roof and cause a collapse. Foam is a lot lighter and will still fall into where the fire is and work on it.” Having the option of using either foam or water up above from the bucket gives them more room to work on putting out fires.