Central styling with new tankers

WASILLA — Two shiny new tankers have found homes at Central Mat-Su Fire Department stations and acting Chief Michael Keenan said, so far, they’re working out great.

The identical 3,500-gallon, $334,228 tankers showed up in December and February and are housed in stations on Knik-Goose Bay Road and Seward Meridian Parkway, respectively. They’re both bigger and more technologically advanced than the department’s other tankers, which all hold 2,000 gallons of water.

Keenan said acquiring the tankers is a part of the department’s improvement plan for its rating with the Insurance Services Organization. The ranking is used to calculate homeowners’ insurance rates and is essentially a measure of how fast and effectively a department can respond to a fire. Departments often cite their ratings as proof of how well the organization functions.

Two other Mat-Su Borough departments have put in for similar trucks, Keenan said, and a third is considering a request.

“These are the biggest tankers we’ve ever purchased,” Keenan said.

They came outfitted with ports with which to dump water to the side of the trucks. Older Central tankers can do that as well, Keenan said, but do so through a homemade adapter on a rear-pointing port.

At 66,000 pounds when filled with water, the difference between the new trucks and their older cousins is noticeable, Keenan said. When driving the truck, “You can really feel the weight.”

Tankers generally bring water for an engine to pump onto a fire. But Keenan said these tankers, like most of Central’s tankers, are outfitted with hoses and ladders and can function as engines. That comes in handy when there are two fires to fight or the tanker beats an engine to a scene.

The new trucks go a step further in their capacity as fire engines, however, as the first Central tankers outfitted to spray their own compressed air foam, a bubbly water that knocks fires down more effectively, Keenan said. The new trucks have bumper-mounted water turrets, which firefighters can aim from inside the trucks. That’s something they’ll likely use often, particularly to hose down brush fires or dampen grass and trees in a wildfire’s path, Keenan said.

Dorte Mobley, a Central engineer who often drives one of the new trucks, said she hasn’t had a chance to use the turret on a fire, but it’s not for lack trying. Thursday, when a burn pile touched off a brush fire that climbed up the side of Bodenburg Butte, she asked the scene commander if she could douse the pile with the turret. It wasn’t needed, she said.

The trucks also look different from most other tankers. They’re designed to hold ladders, hoses and other equipment inside rather than strapped to the outside.

“It keeps them out of the elements, keeps them clean,” Keenan said, adding that helps with upkeep and maintenance.

It also looks nicer, which is Keenan’s opinion and is debated among the Borough’s firefighters.

“I think it looks wrong,” Mobley quipped, adding ladders and hoses are supposed to be on the outside of a fire truck.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiers-man.com or 352-2270.