FIJIAN FIRE ENGINES

Taupo Times, Volume II, Issue 68, 6 May 1953, Page 2

FIJIAN FIRE ENGINES

PASS THROUGH TAUPO Considerable interest was roused :in Tnpp-arirn Strppt. Tnnnn whpn two " """C? ~ — — ■ r ' a. fire engines, painted a typically bright red, pulled up at the Hawkes Bay Motor Company's premises on Tuesday afternoon last week. As the words "Nadi Airport' painted on the vehicles indicated, their destination was Fiji, where they will form part of the flre-fighting equipment at the Nadi International Air Port. They were in charge of Mr J. A. Dale> Principal Fire Oflicer, Civil Aviation Branch, New Zealand Air Depart- ' ment, and were en route from Wellington, where they had been assernbled, to Auckland, for shipment to^Fiji. N.Z. Made Equipment The larger vehicle, a foam tendeiy had a Canadian Ford chassis, with V-8 engine, and was fitted with Marmon - Hetherington all - wheel drive. A five hundred gallon water tank was fitted, with a sixty-five gallon tank of foam-making compound, A pump, made entirely in Wellington, is able to discharge the foam, formed in a generator from the water and compound, onto ,a fire at the rate of two thousand five hundred gallons a minute. The second vehicle was a CO-2 tender? built on a Ford Thames chassis, equipped with 1200 lb of CO-2 in fifty pound cylinders. These are connected to two discharge points, and can discharge the full quantity in four minutes, the cylinders having a pressure of about nine hundred pounds to the square inch.