OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — The Oak Ridge Fire Department has a new truck in its fleet designed for fighting fires in areas where there may not be roads to drive on.
The new truck, Brush 1, was purchased by the City of Oak Ridge. A $16,000 grant from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency was used to purchase equipment. It has a 300-gallon per minute pump for a 300-gallon water tank. It also has a tank for 5 gallons of foam.
Water can be pumped through a nozzle mounted on the truck's bumper, operated with a joystick inside the cabin. The feature is meant to ensure that crews can contain fires along roadsides, allowing for quicker responses in small areas.
It also has 200 feet of booster lines, fire rakes, rogue hoes and backpacks so firefighters can carry a bladder of water on their back with a hand pump to extinguish small fires.
ORFD also bought two backpack leaf blowers that can be used to help control fires in wildlands, moving large amounts of dried leaves and branches to help stop fires from spreading. They also purchased a chainsaw to cut burning trees that could create injury hazards.
