(screaming) - Fire trucks! They're huge and loud and they save your crap from burning down. They've been highly specialized vehicles ever since they were invented. But what are these things built on? What's all inside there? Well put on your fireproof
suits boys and girls, we're going little hose to big hose, compartment to compartment to compartment, bumper to bumper, on this Pierce Arrow XT fire engine. (upbeat music) Fire trucks are totally unique machines and current day fire trucks
are extremely customizable. Everything from the chassis cab size to your engine and transmission options. Today, we're gonna look at how the Oxnard California Fire Department configured their newest
fire engine to serve their mostly urban territory. The particular fire
engine we're looking at is what's known as a pumper, and it has it's own on-board water tank, along with a whole lot of
other tools and equipment that we'll get to shortly. A fire engine like this
will be in service for about 13 to 15 years. Overall, the Pierce Arrow
XT is a thick, wide boy, but at 95 inches, it's actually one of the narrower models. The steering can do a
45 degree cramp angle. What's a cramp angle, you ask? Well, it's apparently
the maximum wheel angle at full steering lock. Better cramp angle makes
it more maneuverable and able to get through tighter spaces, a good thing for an engine on city duty. It even has four wheel
independent suspension to give it a better ride. The frame rails are
made from 120 KSI steel and are over 13 inches wide for increased chassis strength and good handling. Good for its size at least, it's a fire engine. It has a healthy 15
inches of ground clearance in case it needs to climb over any debras or debris in its way and, it's also red but if I do this, now it's yellow. It's called graphical
effects, I don't know! (laughing) All right, you
see that panel over there with all the things on it? Let's go look at it, it's
called the pump panel. This truck carries 500 gallons of water and 20 gallons of foam on board, and I talked to the fire captain, he says that's about enough water for four minutes of spraying. Any more than that and they
gotta hook up to a fire hydrant, which they do with this, right here. So, this is something
crazy I learned today, not every firemen is a firefighter. Let me explain. On this engine there
are three crew members. You have the engineer, who runs this pump and drives the truck, you got the captain, who strategized how they're
gonna put out the fire and then you got the firefight himself, who is more of a workhorse, does kind of a little bit of everything. Okay, so a fire engine gets to a fire. The firefighter hops out, he's grabbing one of these
hoses, he's running in, he's got four minutes to
do what he's gotta do. In the meantime, the engineer who was driving the truck here gets out, he has to find the nearest fire hydrant connect one of the big
ass hoses in the back to this inlet here. He turns on the pump, he makes sure there's
water flowing everywhere, but to do that he's
also got to come in here and do hand calculations
on this spreadsheet to make sure that the firefighter and the captain have enough
water to do their job. Then, after he's done that, he's probably gonna hop in
there too and get, get it done. I thought this thing
carried like eight dudes. There's three dudes per
fire engine, that's crazy. The engineer has got all
the information he needs. He's got the engine RPM, he's got a digital water
level gage right here, but if that fails, there's also a very old-school
water gage right here that can tell him exactly
how much water is in his tank just by looking at this
clear piece of glass but not all fires are best
fought with plain old H2O and the fire department
has to be prepared to fight any kind of inferno. So in addition to the on-board water, this pumper also carries
20 gallons of foam to help put out hydrocarbon
fires, boat fires, or stubborn cardboard
debris and trash fires. The engineer is able
to change how much foam goes into the water mix
with this panel right here. He can do it on the fly and of course, big red
buttons are very important. This one operates the
air horn on the truck if the chief gives the order for all the firefighters
to get the heck out, engineer hits this for 10
seconds, they gotta go. Speaking of going, let's go
look at all the compartments maybe I can find a hose to use. Everything on this truck
has a very specialized and specific place. So, any fireman in the department can quickly find what they need. Hey, these are all the tools that you would probably need to either forcefully get into a house like this, whoa, flat back axe and this other tool which I guess is more of an
old-school East Coast thing. You could pry doors open. On 90% of structure fires that
the, this engine response to they use this stuff. I'll just uh, come on, no
that's not how that goes. Other way Noaln, other way. So yeah, you got your shovels. You got a big drywall hook
to tear walls down with. Something weird I
thought that they had was these big old squeegees right, they got these big old
squeegees just in case like a sprinkler system breaks in doors. The fire department
can quickly clean it up with this thing, that's pretty cool. Come on, everyone's favorite tool. I did get it out. I mean what more do we
have to say, it's an axe. I feel so cool like this. Right here is the engineers SCBA or self-contained breathing apparatus so, the dudes done working the pumps he can hop into the fire if he needs to. There's also extra oxygen
tanks in this compartment here. Another interesting feature,
a bunch of tarps down here. If your furniture hasn't burned up they'll actually group it all together, cover it with these tarps to keep it safe. They also have tarps to put on your floors and carpets so they don't mess it up when they're walking around. I think that's very courteous of them. All right, now that we've seen the driver's side of the truck
let's go to the rear, check out what's back there. All right, from top to
bottom on the back here. Of course we've got the hoses, the one in the middle here
is what the fire engine uses to connect to a fire hydrant. These big boys can pump 250
gallons of water per minute. On either side we've got high rise hoses. Have you ever like, taken the stairs in a big building instead of the elevator, you see those big water connectors? Yeah, that's what these guys hook to. It's so firefighters can
put out a fire on like the 8th floor of a building. It's very useful. They can also be linked
together in case the firefighter needs more hose. Probably the workhorse
or work hose if you will of the fire engine is this
rubber hose in the back. They use this hose for vehicle fires and for wildfires that are
on the side of the freeway. It can self retract. It's just very useful. Captain told me that they
probably use this one the most just 'cause it's so convenient. Oh, that's a nice noise. Another cool old-school
feature on the back here is this button that lets the engineer know to stop if you're
hanging on the back. They don't really do that
anymore, ride back here but it's just cool that
it, that's still there. Another cool thing is these
big bearings right here so you can use that rubber hose without catching on the truck and of course every big truck
needs the rear view camera which they have right there. All right, let's check out
the other side of the truck. There's only one way
to open this thing up, you gotta clap. Whoa, that's stupid. It's mostly medical and
rescue equipment on this side. Down here is the most used
compartment of the truck. Tons of first aid. Believe it or not, this
is all climbing gear for cliff side rescues. This has like tons of like carabiners. There's climbing rope in here,
100 foot ropes, belay ropes, lifelines, what have you. In here they've got a
bunch of life jackets 'cause Oxnard has five miles of coastline so they respond to and stuff as well. Over here there's more traction stuff for first
aid in case you break a leg or something. This is their wildland
survival packs so they've got, shelters in here, other
things they need when out on a brush fire out in
the middle of nowhere. Right here is the captain's SCBA. These packs have about
30 minutes of oxygen but when you're working
super hard fighting a fire it's actually more about
15 minutes of oxygen. That's why they have so many tanks. There's the co2 fire extinguisher and the dry chem fire extinguisher but the most commonly used one, it's actually a big water
one they have at the front and then down here just big
buckets of kitty litter. Just in case there's like an accident and they're need, there's
some sort of substance on the ground that needs to be soaked up and directly above me is all the ladders that this truck needs. There's a 28 foot ladder, a 14 foot ladder and
a 10 foot attic ladder and underneath the racet
there's a big black hose that they use to suck up
water from lakes or pools if there's no access to a fire hydrant. All right, let's check out the
panel on the passenger side. All right, so the panel
on the passenger side, not as crazy as the one on the
driver's side, that's fine. There's still a bunch
of inlets and outlets for water to be used, more hoses. This compartment here has some hardware for the
engineer to couple hoses together. This looks expensive. In this compartment here we
have the water extinguisher. It's used for kitchen fires and, you know, fires where
water will actually help. It's not every fire gets put up by water, that's what the foams for. Anyway, I think before we get in the cab we gotta look at the engine
and to look at the engine we need, the cab lift. This Aero XT is powered by
a Detroit DD13 12.8 liter inline-six turbo diesel. It makes about 470 horsepower and almost 1800 foot-pounds of torque. All sent to the rear
wheels through a six-speed Allison transmission. In a vehicle that weighs 40,000 pounds, you're gonna need all
the grunt you can get. It's also got a tilt cab so the engine can be easily
accessed for easy maintenance. Remember how in the driver side
panel there is a tachometer so the engineer could
see the engine speed. This is what powers
the pump in this truck. Power goes through the engine, through the drive shaft to a transfer case that powers the onboard water pump, either taking water from the onboard tank or from the fire hydrant and
getting it to the fire hoses so the firefighters can do their job. Now that we've seen the
heart of this engine, let's go see the brains. All right, it's a lot harder with those gear on. All right so here we are. Inside a freaking fire truck. The
(beep) is actually very driver focused. Got a big switch panel with
a ton of labeled lights like driver side flood like
you can see there, very cool. Up here there's a, there's tons of roof light. There's a siren button that
I'm not gonna touch right now. There's surprisingly, there's
air conditioning in this truck which actually makes sense
because I'm very hot right now. There's tons of radios in here
as well so the engineer can communicate with the captain. These are actually very
noise canceling it, I can hear my own heartbeat. There's enough room for
four firefighters back there and all their gear. The firefighter seat actually
has a locking mechanism for his breathing apparatus. So he can sit down in the
seat, put the thing on and be locked in and then
when he, it's time to go, unlocks and lets them out. The captain has a computer there where he can monitor all
the trucks functions. The driver can do that as well. So we got the radio of course up here. There's just so much stuff in here. Of course the seat belts, they're red just like a Civic type-R. I think it's a little
slower than one of those. On top of the cab there are a lot of antenna for communication. One of them is called the AVL
or automatic vehicle locator. The AVL lets dispatch know
where all the fire engines are so they can call the closest
engine to an emergency. The coolest antenna on there is one that controls traffic lights. They can do it from up to 300 feet away. If they're approaching in intersections, they can make it green so they
can get to the scene faster. Side note, flashing your
lights at traffic lights doesn't do anything. You gotta have one of
those special antenna. All right, so, I'm gonna
fulfill a childhood dream here. I'm gonna fire up the fire engine. Let's do it. I'm not gonna rev it or anything but this is very cool. Turn on that. Got the lights going. Dare I do the siren, I think so. Hey, you're watching Bumper
to Bumper on Donut Media. I'm gonna turn this off. Well that was cool. (laughing) That was awesome. (dramatic music) Huge mega shout out to
our friends at Oxnard FD for hooking us up with this beast. Follow them on Instagram
at Oxnardcityfire. These guys are heroes and
they're also really, really cool and today was a total
childhood dream come true. This is probably coolest
video we've ever made. Also, major thanks to Oxnard
PD for putting us in touch with the rad captain's here
and don't forget be nice. Hey guys, we have new socks on the donut media store. There Moe Powell baby socks,
they're yellow, I love them. Go to donut.media get yourself some socks. They add five horsepower to your feet. Oh I got a helmet now, cool. (mumbling) - [Woman] Isn't that backwards? - [Man] The hat is backwards. - No it's not. Oh, it is. I would have looked really stupid then.
That was very cool. Definitely interesting.