Hot wheels

WASILLA — For views of Wasilla, it’s hard to match the one from the very top of the Central Mat-Su Fire Department’s newest truck.

The truck, called an “aerial platform,” can lift firefighters from ground level — actually, below ground level — up to 100 feet.

“This is the first platform in the Valley,” Assistant Fire Chief Michael Keenan said.

Chief James Steele said the truck, priced at just over $1 million, was purchased with a state grant. It came to Alaska on a barge Sunday and was driven to the Valley on Monday.

“It’s going to be a borough-wide asset,” Keenan said, but it’s primary goal is to protect the hospital campus.

Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, along with the office building next door, stands four stories high and is one of the largest buildings in the Valley.

“We can reach a 10-story building if we need to,” Keenan said.

Currently, the department has a 100-foot ladder truck stationed on Seward-Meridian Parkway, the closest fire station that can handle the 48-foot-long truck. The new platform will eventually move there and then, later, to whatever station the department builds nearer to the hospital. The ladder truck will come to the station in downtown Wasilla, Steele said

The ladder truck is the same length as the platform truck — 48 feet — Steele said. But they’re completely different machines. Steele said firefighters will be trained to drive and operate the platform truck over the next month or so. Keenan said that toward the end of the month the department will bring up a trainer for specialized instruction.

“There’s a lot of technology in this truck that we’ve never had before,” Keenan said.

The truck has rear-mounted and side-mounted video cameras. When it shifts into reverse, a monitor under the driver’s right arm displays a view out the back. A similar thing happens when the left or right turn signal is activated.

That’s good, Keenan said, because “It’d be easy for a car to get in your blind spot. You’d run it over in this thing and you wouldn’t even know it.”

On a ride up to the platform’s maximum height Thursday, Keenan showed off a little bit of what it can do.

Brackets mounted on the front of the basket can hold a ladder, allowing firefighters to climb out of the basket and then down onto a roof. Air hoses run up to the basket so firefighters can patch directly into them rather than having to rely on quickly depleted air tanks on their backs.

There’s even a way to hook repelling ropes to the basket

“We could actually repel out of the end of this thing,” Keenan said. “All the guys are like, ‘When are we going to do that? When are we going to do that?’”

In the bays at the large downtown station, where the truck will be housed as the department outfits it, the aerial platform is joined by two other bright, shiny new additions to the department’s fleet.

Delivered last month, those trucks are both fire engines built for mixed use in fighting wildfires and house fires. Like the aerial platform, they’re bigger trucks than the department’s older models; but they’re not longer, they’re taller. That higher suspension, Keenan said, helps in bad weather and on bad roads.

“If we have to take them off road we can do that if we need to,” Keenan said last week, pausing before he added, “But I’m not going to let them take them off road.”

All three new trucks have what’s called compressed-air foam pumps. The foam, Keenan said, puts fires out dramatically quicker than plain water.

“That’s what’s making our water last so much longer and making it so much more effective,” he said.

The new engines, he said, can “pump and roll,” meaning they’re able to spray water as they drive. That capability comes courtesy of bumper-mounted turrets and would be great in a situation where wildfire is threatening homes. In those instances, firefighters generally hose down threatened homes to hopefully prevent them from igniting.

With the turret, Keenan said, they could “pull into the driveway to start pre-treating the house,” without having to waste time pulling out as much hose.

The new engines, he said, pump at 1,500 gallons per minute. The platform truck, by contrast, has the largest pump in the fleet, capable of spraying water at 2,000 gallons per minute.

Of course to pump that much water that fast you need a lot of water on hand. The platform truck’s 300-gallon tank wouldn’t be much help. And there are only a few fire hydrants that have that much water available — some in downtown and the hydrants near the hospital.

Of course if they pulled up to a lake or other body of water, “We’ve got all the water in the world,” Keenan said, before adding, “well, all the water in the lake.”

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