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Longmont Fire Department, located 40 miles north of Denver, serves a population of 86,000 residents. Longmont is mostly a suburban city but has industrial, urban and rural areas. The full-service career department provides fire suppression, emergency medical services, technical rescue, hazardous materials response, fire investigation, public fire education, code review, and building fire inspections. The department operates Urban Search and Rescue, Technical Rescue and HazMat Teams, as well as fire investigation and wildland response. Every Longmont firefighter is a state certified Emergency Medical Technician.
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Assistant Fire Chief Scott Snyder has been with the department for more than 32 years and knows the area like the back of his hand. “We’re just outside the foothills. The town’s named after Long’s Peak which is the view to the west of us. We’re a career municipal department.”
The Most Valuable Asset
The department is organized to address a wide range of emergencies. “Personnel is our biggest investment so our strategy is to provide each crew all the tools they need to handle the vast majority of responses without having to call for additional units. That gives us the most flexibility, and makes our department more effective and more efficient. The closest engine can probably take care of the vast majority of calls to which they’re dispatched. We have a paramedic on every rig and they carry everything that’s on an ambulance, except a gurney, so they can start advanced life support. They can do basic extrications. They can, of course, attack a fire.”
The Longmont Fire Department recently placed into service five Pierce® Velocity® pumpers. The 70-inch long cab features a 10-inch raised roof, seating for six firefighters, frontal impact and side roll protection systems and a dual module vehicle data recorder. Large storage compartments carry a wide range of rescue tools and emergency equipment. The chief describes their capabilities, “They’re set up as rescue pumpers. Each of the vehicles carries Hurst spreaders, cutters, ram and cribbing equipment and basic extrication gear. Everything required for a typical car accident.
“We roll on everything that the ambulance does. We have three ambulances in town and six frontline Pierce engines so odds are good there’s an engine available that will be closer and can start advanced life support as soon as they arrive.” The department takes a different approach than some others when it comes to storing medical equipment, “We’ve had rigs in the past with medical inside the cab, but firefighters found that whenever they climbed out of the cab, they ended up having to climb back in the cab to get something else. We have since opted to have all of the medical equipment located in an outside compartment on the passenger side. It has a heater that runs off the truck engine so we can keep the meds at a controlled temperature. If we need to go back to the rig and grab something else, it’s right there at ground level.”
What about structural fires? “Typically, on a fire in Longmont, the first engine in is the one that everybody else works off of. Even though we have other engines coming to a call, they’ll just pull additional lines off that first rig. With 1500 gpm pumpers, we rarely really need to set up another pumper.”
Solutions to Fit the Requirements
The department prefers a rear mounted pump instead of more traditional side mount or top mount location. Assistant Chief Snyder notes, “The compartment space you gain behind the cab - that compartment forward of the rear axle on either side – is certainly significant. We also end up with a transverse space between those two compartments in front of the water tank where we carry backboards and long handled tools. We find it gives us more room.” The department sees other advantages to the configuration. “You’ve got a rear compartment where the pump and all the hose connections are located. In addition, all of our hose lines come off the rear of the truck on our preconnects and they all hook right into the outlets on the pump panel so separate pre-connect outlets are not required.”
Assistant Chief Snyder also sees advantages for the pump operator. “With the pump panel at the left rear side of the truck, the operator can view three sides of the incident by only taking a step or two – whereas with a midship pump, you either have to run to the front or the rear of the truck to try to see to the other side. We’ve tried top mounts but our engineers are pretty busy. They don’t have time to stand and view the world around them. They’re up and down from a top mount pump too often to make those practical.”
Feedback
What about feedback from his firefighters on the new fleet? “They’re happy with them. They like the way they drive and the TAK-4 independent front suspension. Now our entire front line has the independent front suspension and that really makes a heck of a difference on the rough roads,
speed bumps and cross pan drainages at intersections –
it doesn’t throw you all over the cab like a straight axle.”
Photos by Scott Noakes/Longmont Fire Department