China Fire Bulletin Issue #1 September 2014 | Page 31

APPARATUS
消防车
Airport Firefighting Truck

Present and Future:

2015 Capability Enhancement Plan for
China’s Fire Service

I

Future fire fighting vehicle development needs to incorporate advanced fire equipment. Fire fighting vehicles are
the core fire equipment of any department and playing a vital role in planning and strategy, directly relate to the
capacity of fire forces and the market development of new vehicle designs.

n recent years, all levels of
the Chinese government are
paying close attention to the
development of the fire service, and
have put forth a lot of effort towards
the development of better apparatus.
However, the quantity, composition,
quality and other aspects of
apparatus can still not completely
ensure the fire security for a large
part of the Chinese population. To
be quite honest, the general quality
of fire fighting vehicles in China
is not great. The composition and
concentration of apparatus types is
unreasonable due to mishandling
of purchasing decisions leading to
inaccurate and unpredictable market

demand, and such concentrations of
certain types of vehicles have limited
the capacity of fire fighting forces
across the country.
According to the Chinese standard
of city firehouse development, “Level
1” firehouses should be equipped
with 5-7 fire apparatus, “level 2”
firehouses should be equipped with
8-11 fire apparatus, and special
operation firehouses should be
equipped with 8-11 fire apparatus
of certain specialty applications.
Although the average number
of apparatus in the firehouses is
increasing rapidly, there still exists
a serious lack of apparatus in China
as a whole. Severely overused

apparatus occupy a big proportion
of the national fleet and most of
these apparatus, assigned as first
responders, are pumper tankers
carrying 6-8 tons (1,500-2,000
gallons) of water to compensate
for the lack of training to use fire
hydrants during responses. Needless
to say, many apparatus are limited
in their capacity to carry fire or
rescue equipment and so are unable
to implement different fire and
rescue tactics. Most apparatus in
the national fleet are aged, built
on JieFang, Dongfeng, Sitaier and
other low-end chassis, which have
many disadvantages and cannot be
qualified for modern firefighting and

消防前沿 CHINA FIRE BULLETIN

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