Fire Engines Photos

These seem to have very limited capacity when compared to brush trucks used in many other countries, where tanks around 1,000 liters seem to be the minimum, and are often combined with CAFS to substantially increase their efficiency. Australia is one exception, with their large fleets of 650 liter Toyota Land Cruisers, but of course these are backed up by very numerous full size 4X4 tankers too. In France, there are some 1,000 liter brush units, but far more common are trucks with either 3,000 or 4,000 litre tanks, with a recent trend to 16 ton units with 6,000. German brush trucks tend also to be either 3,000 or 4,000 litre capacity, and - in the light of global warming - many brigades are acquiring additional units nowadays. So I might be tempted to think this approach with light pickup trucks and very limited tanks is perhaps a bit shortsighted in light of the kind of problems which even Britain is likely to encounter as hot and dry weather becomes the norm.

Ed: this is London and hydrants are rarely far away. In the above incident it was only a few hundred metres away.


Added by Rob Johnson on 13 July 2025.

The caption mentions a ten pump fire. On this scale of incident, perhaps a first response with European or US sized 4X4 brush tankers might well have been more helpful? Combined with CAFS, these certainly make the best use of limited manpower and water resources much more effectively than either the tiny foggers, or structural pumpers, or a combination of both. Although brush pumpers are generally not much use for interior structural firefighting, they can be very helpful when it comes to protecting exposures, especially when equipped with stiff compressed air foam.

Added by Rob Johnson on 17 July 2025.

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