Popular in many European fire services, these minor alarm units have grown in size as the amount of equipment they carry has increased over the years. Although standard panel vans like this example are still used widely in some places including France, custom box bodies on chassis cabs from 5 to >7 tons are increasingly common. They are usually staffed by two crew members. Some carry extinguishing equipment including skid mounted self contained CAFS installations, but in many cases the equipment load is confined to non fire incidents. In practice, many of these units spend most of their runs responding to unconfirmed AFAs, which means that only a couple of firefighters are dispatched - thus leaving the rest of the duty watch available to man full size trucks and deal with real incidents.
Numerous reports from fire services in different countries indicate that only one in around 800 unconfirmed AFAs is an actual fire, and these are often incipient and /or already contained by a sprinkler system. With over 40% of all calls in many major cities being AFAs, the minor alarm van has proven to be a very effective way of coping with this problem while still maintaining good fire cover. In addition, they are also able to handle a wide variety of less urgent service calls, which means that full size pumpers and their crews are much more readily available for real emergencies - as they are not very often tied up with general service calls.
Numerous reports from fire services in different countries indicate that only one in around 800 unconfirmed AFAs is an actual fire, and these are often incipient and /or already contained by a sprinkler system. With over 40% of all calls in many major cities being AFAs, the minor alarm van has proven to be a very effective way of coping with this problem while still maintaining good fire cover.
In addition, they are also able to handle a wide variety of less urgent service calls, which means that full size pumpers and their crews are much more readily available for real emergencies - as they are not very often tied up with general service calls.
Added by Rob Johnson on 21 July 2025.