What would a fire department be without a fire truck? German Township has eight trucks that are used for fire, rescue and emergency medical incidents.
There are several classifications for the apparatus or vehicles in German Township Fire Department's arsenal: Pumpers, Tankers, Brush Fire and Rescue vehicles. Several of the other departments in the suburban fire association have trucks called snorkels, aerials, and/or ladder trucks which are used to reach structures very high in the air such as multiple story buildings. Fortunately, we don't have a lot of prohibitively high areas in our township and can call on the other area department's vehicles if we need to.
Pumpers draw water from their own on-board water tanks, bring it into their pumps which adds pressure to it and then "charge" the various fire hoses that are connected to it. The pump's capacity is measured by the number of gallons it can pump in a minute (referred to as Gallons Per Minute or GPM). They also typically carry self-contained breathing apparatus, ladders, axes, and most importantly, our fire fighters to the emergency. The newer trucks in this class can carry six firefighters to the incident eliminating the need for each person to drive their own personal vehicle to the fire. 8 Engine 81(8E81), 8 Engine 8(8E8) and 8 Engine 9(8E9) are pumpers. They can also serve the role of a Tanker as they can also transport varying amounts of water.
Tankers are used to hold large volumes of water in the event that a fire hydrant is not close by. They are particularly useful because, unlike a major city, or one of the township's subdivision or industrial parks, most of the townships more rural areas do not have a fire hydrant because of the lack of municipal water supply.
One of our tankers (8T9) carries a fold-a-tank which is a 2500 gallon portable swimming pool-like holding tank. The fold-a-tank is taken off the truck and then filled with water from a dump valve on the rear of tanker. The fold-a-tank's purpose is to "stage" water. When the water in a tanker's tank has been off-loaded into the fold-a-tank, the tanker is then driven to a fire hydrant or body of water (e.g. lake) where its tank is refilled. While the tanker is retrieving more water from the distant source, a pumper draws the water out of the fold-a-tank. It takes quite a bit of coordination between the tanker and pumper to insure that the pumper never runs out of water while the tanker is going to retrieve more. 8 Tanker 9(9T9) is a tanker.
Rescue vehicles carry defibrillators (used on heart attack victims), back boards (provide immobilization), stokes baskets (used for difficult rescues where immobilization is of extreme importance but environment is not conducive to a back board), a variety of other extrication tools such as an air hammer/chisel and Jaws of Life (used in automobile accidents to free victims), and other life saving tools. They are not ambulances, and therefore do not transport people to the hospital. 8 Rescue 8(8R8), 8 Rescue 9(9R9) and 8 Rescue 1(8R1) are Rescue vehicles.
Because of the numerous brush and field fires that
happen in the spring, summer and fall, the department owns a brush fire truck. 8 Brush
9 (8R9) is the department's vehicle for this
purpose. We recently (2003) added a 4 wheel all-terrain Gator
with a tank for water. It can pull its trailer to transport patients
from rough areas.
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| Car 81 | Rescue 8R8 | Engine 8E81 |
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| Engine 8E8 | Brush 8B9 | Rescue 8R9 |
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| Engine 8E9 | Tanker 8T9 | Special Ops trailer |
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| Rescue 8R1 | Gator & Trailer |
The fire trucks and other vehicles are stationed at our two stations. To see the pictures of stations and their facilities go here.