On a recent bright and sunny Sunday morning, longtime Hawleyville Volunteer Fire Company member Dave Jossick joined Chief Don DiGioia and company President Cliff Beers at their headquarters to give The Newtown Bee a first look at their new Tanker 339.

While those who follow the business of firefighting might relegate a tanker to being one of the least interesting pieces of apparatus across an inventory of response vehicles standing by to serve among Newtown’s volunteer fire companies, this newest piece of rolling stock has great potential to be an asset to all five of those units — not just because of its capacity to carry water, but also added workforce to fire and emergency scenes.

According to Chief DiGioia, Tanker 339 was designed with a six-person cab — a significant departure from the other recently acquired two-person fire tankers that were assigned to the Sandy Hook, Dodgingtown, and Botsford volunteer companies over the past few years.

He explained that the acquisition of the Hawleyville apparatus completes a program of fire tanker replacements that began six or seven years ago as the Board of Fire Commissioners considered the prospect of replacing Newtown’s fleet of aging tankers that no longer were conforming to various updated national and industry safety standards. Originally, he said, the town created a budget and plan to acquire four identical two-person tankers that would have foundations manufactured by Spartan Fire Chassis, and would be fully equipped by 4 Guys Fire Trucks of Meyersdale, Penn.

But due to cost escalations over the extended time it often takes to produce a multi-apparatus acquisition, it ended up the town would only be able to afford three of the two-person tankers, which were in turn assigned to Sandy Hook, Botsford, and Dodgingtown. Newtown Hook & Ladder does not maintain a tanker.

“Our existing tanker was in pretty good shape, so Hawleyville was able to hold off for a couple of years until a new budget was developed for the fourth tanker,” DiGioia said.

Since the four-tanker capital budget only allowed for three to be purchased, Hawleyville took a pass and reworked the specifications. As it turned out, Spartan was able to put together what Hawleyville was really looking for with a six-person cab, and the cost ended up being comparable to the other three trucks that had two-person cabs.

“Technically, you always want two people on board to operate a tanker,” DiGioia said. “But this has the advantage of getting four more crew members to a call with the tanker, instead of rolling out additional pieces of apparatus just to carry more firefighters to a call.”

Particularly when a tanker is called for assistance outside its district, the addition of up to four more firefighters on board could be as important as the 3,000 gallons of water being delivered to working fire scenes, the Hawleyville chief said.

DiGioia said he expects to have firefighters trained on the new apparatus, and plans to have it in service in the near future.

He said the 2021 Spartan cab and chassis is replacing the current truck, which is a 1989 Pierce four-person open cab. Besides being designed and manufactured to carry 3,000 gallons of water safely to a fire scene, the Hawleyville truck is also equipped with a 1,000 gallons-per-minute Hale pump.

“This adds to the ability of the truck to be used in multiple scenarios and operations,” DiGioia said. “The truck is designed with the latest safety innovations included, such as Spartan’s Advanced Protection System, which was developed for passenger safety and impact protection. The truck is equipped with a 505 HP Cummins Inc motor, giving it the ability to operate with the large volumes of water onboard.”

Beers noted that Spartan’s basic footprint for all its tankers include a six-person cab.

With an added four-person crew, safety is of paramount concern. According to a now two-decade-old report from the CDC, back in 2001, incidents involving motor vehicles accounted for approximately 20% of US firefighter deaths each year; and cases involving tankers were the most prevalent of these motor vehicle incidents.

During a period between 1977 and 1999, 73 deaths occurred in 63 crashes involving tankers. Of those deaths, 54 occurred in 49 crashes in which tankers rolled over, and eight occurred in six crashes in which the tankers left the road. The other cases involved collisions with another vehicle (10 deaths in seven crashes) and a collision with stationary object(s) resulting in one death.

At that point, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) spearheaded a move to affect widespread improvements and protocols to better train operators, to implement design changes to significantly improve safety features related to tankers, and even factoring in the weather and road conditions and topography in which the tanker would typically operate.

Around the same time, the US Fire Administration (USFA) also increased its focus on fire tanker safety improvements. Today, firefighters like those in Hawleyville are benefiting from two decades of scrutiny and resulting improvements, including vehicle design.

“This truck is one of the safest on the road, it meets all the NFPA [National Fire Protection Association] safety requirements we need to meet including anti-rollover technology — it is a heavy truck and it carries a lot of water,” the chief added.

The Hawleyville company is applying its existing tanker as a trade-in toward the new one. Over the course of several training sessions, Hawleyville and likely other local firefighters will undergo added training on its operation.

“We’re really happy with this truck,” DiGioia concluded, “and we’ll have it in service as soon as it goes through its final inspections and everyone is trained to operate it as safely as possible.”

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Editor John Voket can be reached at john@thebee.com.