Fire Engines Photos

Some volunteer fire stations in France, Germany and quite a few other European countries often have a small commercial window van like this, with between five and nine seats. Christened “multi purpose tenders” they are primarily used as general non emergency runabouts. They are also very commonly used to respond to incidents carrying any number of volunteers who have arrived at the fire station after earlier responding members have already left on the regular appliances, which have been turned out. This approach often adds significant extra personnel to the response to any incident, in addition to the full appliance crew levels.

Added by Rob Johnson on 23 September 2025.

The tiny village of Balgau has a population of less than 1,000 but has had a volunteer fire company for over a hundred years now. The dozen members have a modern three bay fire station with a full size pumper, an ambulance and a new multi purpose van, which replaced this older unit…As of today, September 23, 2024, the volunteers had made eighteen runs.

Added by Rob Johnson on 24 September 2025.

An annualized turnout rate of around twenty four runs seems a bit low, even for a very small rural volunteer fire company. But the least busy volunteer fire station I have ever come across was in Catalonia, which has a state fire service. Although it did not have an ambulance, which are typically a lot busier than fire engines, it made only six runs all whole of last year!



Added by Rob Johnson on 25 September 2025.

VTU small alarm van which Balgau inherited from another FS

Added by Jacques PETER on 26 September 2025.

Although this may have started its career as a small alarm van, I think it is unlikely the Balgau volunteers used it as such, because they only respond to incidents around once a fortnight on average. After all, their full size pumper was not bring overused! As they added extra seats, it seems more likely that they were looking to emulate their German colleagues just over the border to the East and create a home made MZF, intended to make it possible for late arriving volunteers to have a means to get to an incident with two tone horns and a blue light too. With only a dozen firefighters on the roster, adding two extra seats was enough, as there would have been nobody to occupy any more once the pumper crew were turned out…

Added by Rob Johnson on 27 September 2025.

Sorry Rob, I do confirm this was a VTU until 2023, and was replaced. Balgau has 1 light pump and 1 VTU, even a very small village.
I am originally from the Alsace province and sure of my statement!

Added by Jacques PETER on 28 September 2025.

Thanks for following up! I must admit it is more than a bit surprising that a volunteer outfit with a dozen members and one run every two weeks would run a VTU, as these are usually on the roster at much busier fire stations in order to ensure that full size pumper’s availability is not compromised.

Added by Rob Johnson on 30 September 2025.

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