A tank giant to
fight forest fires.

Large area, large vehicle

One hour southeast of Berlin, Märkische Heide is one of the largest German municipalities, yet it is sparsely populated. The seventeen districts are home to only 4,000 inhabitants, of which 260 are active members of the sixteen district fire departments. That’s a pretty good ratio! But every single one of them and twenty-two emergency vehicles are needed to ensure the safety of the inhabitants of the 210 square-kilometer area. And looking toward the future, the challenges are only mounting for the firefighters. After all, a large part of the area is forested, which means there’s a higher risk of forest fires in times of rising heat levels and increasing drought. That’s why the municipal firefighters recently made another upgrade—in the form of a high-performance Rosenbauer MT-series tank tender.

A large tank tender to fight forest fires

“We had ten forest fires in 2022,” thirty-four-year-old District Fire Chief Manuel Borch explains. That they didn’t do much damage is owed to state-of-the-art monitoring technology. “In the state of Brandenburg, we have the best early forest fire detection system,” the young man, who took leadership of the district fire department in 2021, waxes enthusiastic. Different camera images—not even from special forest fire detection systems!—are automatically analyzed and submitted for human review on suspicious activity. The fire can be swiftly located using remote optical detection of smoke plumes. Time is of the essence in forest fires, more so than in other situations.

Human resources are usually limited in an auxiliary fire company, especially during the day. And Manuel knows that “most forest fires develop between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.” Given the comparatively small crew, it was important to purchase a tank tender that had as many high-performance features as possible. As Manuel puts it in his thick Berlin accent, “Do a lot with very little. With this truck and only one crew, we get the water volume of two tank tenders to the scene.” A Rosenbauer MT on an all-terrain Tatra chassis featuring gigantic 8,600-liter (2,272 US gallons) water tanks and 500-liter (132 US gallons) foaming agent tanks, an N35 pump (with a maximum of 3,500 liters (925 US gallons) per minute), a remote-controlled RM 15C bumper turret (with a maximum of 1,500 liters (396 US gallons) per minute and a 70-meter (230 feet) throw range), and manual RM24 roof turret (with a maximum of 3,000 liters (793 US gallons) per minute and an 80-meter (262 feet) throw range) meets all these requirements.

The many benefits of the MT

With its dual extinguishing agent storage, the MT can do a lot without hydrant infrastructure, suction points, or other tank tenders. In case there’s a larger fire, the MT can buy time for other vehicles to come for backup. “They will then supply the tank tender with water by shuttle.” Water has also become a limited resource. On the one hand, there is not enough potable water, and on the other, many shallow wells are now practically unusable for firefighting missions. The Märkische Heide fire department must therefore construct new deep wells equipped with their own pumps, because at some point, the vehicle pumps are not sufficient for water suction.

Another bonus is the off-road compatibility of the Tatra chassis, “which can you take up to 70 kilometers (44 miles) per hour—if you want—across a dirt road without catapulting you out of your seat.”

Finally, a vehicle that can perform as much as two similar trucks only needs one parking space. And saving space is a great thing for the folks at Märkische Heide.

Volunteers are also firefighters—only with another day job

This forest-firefighting giant is stationed in the district of Groß Leuthen, along with thirty-one active-duty firefighters. By the way, fifty-one of the 260 firefighters on duty in the municipality are women. That’s twenty percent and counting! “We’re experiencing a major shift. Of the new generation, sixty percent are women,” Manuel is delighted to say. Old gender roles are progressively disappearing.

But that is not the only area where things are changing. “Going for a beer bender on the weekend—that’s a thing of the distant past,” Manuel says, eager to get rid of stubborn “romantic” notions. “While it’s an honorary post, it’s very time-consuming and requires an increasing amount of training not to lose sight of things. You have to stay up to date on the complexity of modern vehicles. But the teammates are extremely ambitious.”

Our conversation makes clear over and over what the volunteer firefighters achieve on a daily basis. On site, nobody cares if you’ve been working ten hours prior in your day job. People except professional aid. It’s always the same two words on our backs: fire department,” the Märkische Heide fire chief emphasizes. “And here, we barely have time to brief or debrief.”

The MT—which had never existed in this configuration before—has been on duty since October 2022. In the first nine months, it was deployed twice for firefighting missions and once for technical support. So far, there have been no reports of a major fire.