brush rigs carry more water than hose, built for getting into places the big trucks can't and fighting with their own water.
Most rural rigs also have lots of water with hose beds on top set up so they can stop at a hydrant and pull hose off the bed as they travel closer to the fire. They usually carry a folding "drop tank" that gets set up in front of the truck that they can have water delivered into and pull with the pump into the fighting hoses. Those are usually cross laid much like the back bed so firefighters can grab a nozzle and pull hose off for the fire. It is important to pull all of the hose off the bed before charging it, don't ask. along the sides we carried med boxes and scott packs (air masks) and maybe a hurst tool (jaws of life)
water tenders are just that, they may have a pump to pull water from a body of water but they are usually making round trips to a hydrant and the drop tank. They may have some hose but it is back up. Lots of water and hard sucker hoses, maybe some spare air bottles.
City rigs usually have a tank for quick water but after that it is hooked to a hydrant and pumping so there is more room for rakes and brooms to destroy crime scenes with. Our first out truck had room for 6 in front, and in back we had a generator with lights and an air compressor and lots of scot packs, with a hose bed on top for taking hydrants. It was a later design so the pump was back there too, not on the front bumper like the rural rigs. In the nearby city I know they carried pretty much the same but some of it was in interchangeable units so that in summer they carried more inch and a half hose for brush and grass fires and in winter those units were swapped for more scott packs and bottles and house fire equipment like saws and fans and such.
Basically, we carried as much stuff as we could remember we had plus a few surprises. There are a lot of fittings used when your water source might be a farmers irrigation line or a "dry hydrant"-basically a buried box full of water with a place to hook up and suck it out. The tools for extricating people from cars took a lot of room, we had air powered bags that could slide under a car that was sitting low after a wreck and lift it a foot at a time with lots of wooden cribbing blocks, hydraulic rams for pushing up dashboards, and of course the jaws that could cut a steering column if it was in the way. Back boards for the victims that we never saw again if they went on a helicopter, most of ours were stenciled with the name of a neighboring department anyway so what the hell, and ropes and ladders and pike poles and even plain old ABC portable fire extinguishers.
When I first started we were still riding some of us on the back bumper, no life belts just a loop of rope and a bar to hold onto. By the time you got to the fire you were pretty well surfing an adrenalin wave and if the ride in didn't kill you, you were invincible the rest of that call.
lots of info. It was fun unwinding tonight and telling of the things I used to love. They say firefighting is the worlds second oldest profession. Like number one, you sell your body to it. 10 years and I was done. Didn't deliver any babies, didn't save any cats.
