Fire Engines Photos

The Mercedes 4x4's were originally bought as Light Rescue Units (if I remember correctly there were 4 of them: Stratford, Wembley, Lambeth & Lewisham) for the LFB. For some reason the powers-at-be decided to convert them for use as Command Support Units (CSU). The original idea was to have a mix of LRU and HRU (heavy rescue unit) but instead they changed the HRU to FRU (fire rescue unit) and at that time there were only five of them (Heston, Battersea, East Ham, Paddington & Euston as of 1999) covering London. Today the number of FRU's have trebled due in part the threat of terroism in the city (remember the 7/7 bombings) and having the required support to deal with any incident thereof. To work on the FRU's (they use to call them Emergency Tender's (ET)) use to be the epitome of firefighting in London, similar in some way to the New Yosk Fire Dept. Today I'm not so sure, I left the LFB in 2002.

Added by Sean Ragon on 05 March 2010.

This might explain the photo of the Somerset Fire Brigade Mercedes 1124 WRL that was taken at an open day at the LFB Ruislip workshops. Perhaps London had it there to evaluate it before purchasing the Mercedes CSU's. The Somerset machine was on a G plate.

Added by PAUL PICKFORD on 05 March 2010.

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