Nice photo Dick. I'm curious though. With the nearest full sized pump 26 miles away, are there other LFAs that are closer that can respond? Or is this unit on its own at incidents?
Also, what kind of pump does this appliance have? Portable? Power take off? Size of water tank? Reel? That far out do they use fire plugs or cisterns?
No the WrL at Kyle of Lochalsh is the nearest. As the Glenelg appliance can travel a further 10 miles away from the Kyle direction it means that at its extreme the supporting appliance can need to travel 36 miles of which just over 20 are on very narrow torturous roads. Ratagan approx 10 miles away have a LDV van that can be mobilised to wild fires and RTAs but it has no fire fighting capacity and is not mobilised to structure fires. Bear in mind that Glenelg and lots of other communities in the West Highlands prior to 2004/5 were only equipped with a few items of portable fire fighting equipment stored in a garden shed that had to be transported in private cars or whatever was available.
The LFAs have a tank and hosereel fed by a semi plumbed in low pressure portable pump. No idea of the tank capacity but I would suggest that its probably not much more than 100 gallons. There are some fire hydrants available and they do of course have the facility to pump water from open sources such as streams, rivers, ponds etc. There are moves afoot to issue larger appliances to many of these units but lots of the stations are not big enough to house them and the roads really are not really suitable.
I have re-visited the Highland n Isles website, and found they have added more station information, and incident information than when I was on it last.
Added by Gary Simpson on 25 May 2010.