Mountain View County council has approved the purchase of four fire department tankers at a cost of $405,000 each.
The move came by way of motion at the recent regularly scheduled council meeting.
Provided by Winnipeg's Fort Garry Fire Trucks International, the tankers will be used by the Carstairs, Didsbury, Olds and Cremona fire departments.
The purchase will be funded from the general fire reserve, with each tanker having a 20-year asset life cycle.
“Fire tankers are an important piece of equipment for rural fire suppression,” administration said in a briefing note to council. “A fire tanker’s basic function is to deliver a large quantity of water to the fire scene in a timely manner.
“A fire tanker must be able to source an emergency fill site and return to the emergency location with a full tank of water in as short of a turnaround time as possible.”
Council heard that fire departments had three main objectives in mind during the tender design process:
- Design a tender with a minimum 3,500 gallon water tank, but meeting the capacity of their portable tanks and improving shuttle times drastically.
- Design a tender with an appropriate chassis for the weight of the water and powertrain that all licensed firefighters can operate.
- Keep the apparatus very basic and keep costs as low as possible.
The four new tankers will be delivered in 2019.
