Fire Engines Photos

Over many years I have always been quite interested to see how fire services in different countries crew their pumpers. Although there are of course a lot of differences, it seems most fire services in Europe, North America and the Far East usually have a five person crew. In France and Germany, six person crews are more common, and in the Netherlands most pumps have seating for seven, but often actually run with five or six. Similarly, some volunteer fire companies in Germany still buy pumps with nine seat cabs and a few still do here in the US, but here too the trend has been to cabs with fewer seats. Dallas fire department did a study a few years ago, crewing different pumpers with four, five or six firefighters. Following the year long experiment they concluded that five was ideal - and most large cities here including Chicago and New York have five person crews.

In the UK, four person crews seem to be becoming increasingly common among paid fire brigades, presumably as a part of the cost saving efforts being made by fire brigades in general. This is of course the practical minimum for “two in, two out”, but many brigades do not require the driver to don his firefighting gear until after arrival on scene, which may be a bad idea when the crew is only four.

Some US towns operate three person pumpers, but this limited staffing is usually associated with a very large number of units being in service, so a typical structure fire response still includes the NFPA recommended attendance of sixteenth firefighters. Four pumps, one ladder and one chief are called out, and as the fire stations are close together response times are still satisfactory.

In this context, I should mention that while cities with populations around 100, 000 in the UK tend to have one fire station, similar sized US cities typically have five.

In these days of automatic and/ or remote pump control, the role of the DPO does not necessarily immobilize him or her at the pump panel, so in a way he or she becomes a more useful crew member for other duties. Sp, if this new MAN is so equipped, it may be that the reduction in seating capacity is not a major problem.

One reason individual crew seats have become more common is occupant safety, with BA holders and fully effective integrated inertia reel seatbelts much easier to install when installed with them. Even German nine seat cabs now have individual rear seats, usually four with integrated BA backrests and three without - but all with dedicated seat belts.

I have been interested to see that in Japan - where most full size pumpers have a five man crew - the DPO is not even issued with turnout gear. His job does not involve any actual firefighting, but as and when Japanese fire services adopt automatic pump systems, this may yet change…

Added by Rob Johnson on 24 April 2023.

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