The Riverside County (CA) Fire Department covers the fourth largest county in California, plus 20 cities by contract, encompassing 7,303 square miles and serving a population of nearly 2.5 million persons. The department’s jurisdiction covers diverse environments that stretch from the Orange County line on the West, to the San Bernardino County line on the North, the Arizona state line on the East, and to the San Diego and Imperial County lines on the South.
The fire department staff includes 1,150 full-time paid CAL FIRE firefighters and paramedics, 240 Riverside County firefighters and support personnel, and 150 volunteer/reserve firefighters used to staff engines, squads or specialized equipment, dictated by departmental needs.
Riverside County runs 84 Type 1 engines; nine Type 3 engines; 11 Type 6 engines; four quints; 14 trucks; 31 squad companies, including nine medic squads and 10 medic ambulances; two hazardous materials response units and one hazardous materials squad; two breathing support units; 11 water tenders; two bulldozers; one excavator; and one fire/rescue boat; as well as an array of CAL FIRE Type 3 engines, bulldozers, aircraft and transportable cisterns.
Joel Konecky, vice president of sales for SVI Trucks, says SVI built an incident/breathing air support truck for Riverside County on a Spartan Gladiator medium four door (MFD) cab and chassis with a 20-foot aluminum body that is powered by a 455-horsepower (hp) Cummins X12 engine and an Allison 4000 EVS automatic transmission. Wheelbase on the truck is 194 inches, overall length is 32 feet 4½ inches, and overall height is 11 feet 11 inches.
Konecky points out that the truck’s crew consists of a driver and officer, while the crew cab has three bench seats in a triangular formation that serves as a firefighter rehab area accessed from a door on the officer’s side of the truck. “There’s also an RV-style lavatory on the driver’s side behind the crew cab that’s accessed by a door on that side,” Konecky says. “The entire crew area and lavatory are serviced by a heavy duty air conditioning/heating system, while the driving area of the truck is handled by the truck’s chassis AC/heating system.”
Scott Beck, sales manager for Fire Apparatus Solutions, who sold the truck to Riverside County, says this new unit replaces an older similar SVI truck the department had that had outlived its usefulness. “This new truck has a Bauer K22 air compressor, four ASME 6,000-psi air storage cylinders, two Bauer CFS 5.5 dual unit fill stations with compressor controls, and storage for 32 self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) air cylinders,” Beck says…