Also known as a pumper, our fire engines are large multipurpose toolboxes. Their primary purpose is to bring firefighters, hoses, and water to a house fire for extinguishment. However, they do much more than that. They are equipped with paramedics and advanced life support equipment to assist ambulances on emergency medical calls. They also respond to a variety of incidents, from motor vehicle accidents to ice rescues.

Also known as medics, these vehicles respond to medical emergencies and transport sick and injured individuals to the hospital. Bend Fire & Rescue provides emergency and non-emergency ambulance services to the City of Bend and the outlying Deschutes County Rural Fire Protection District. The ambulance coverage area for Bend Fire & Rescue covers 1,400 square miles, including everything from Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort to the community of Hampton. We have two types of ambulances: Basic Life Support ambulances for non-emergency and low-acuity medical calls, and Advanced Life Support ambulances for incidents requiring emergency medical care. These ambulances are staffed with firefighter/paramedics who can be assigned to either fire engines or ambulances.

Also known as interfaces or brush rigs, these engines are designed for a specific purpose. They have a much taller clearance, allowing them to go off-road and stop wildfires before they can threaten the community. These engines are primarily used for brush, grass, and forest fires, and they stand between the wildland fire and residences in the wildland-urban interface. Sometimes, these engines are requested throughout the state to assist with wildfires threatening other communities.

Fire engines and brush rigs can only carry 750-1,000 gallons of water. Most of the time, we can use hydrants to get the rest of the water we need, but sometimes we respond to fires without access to fire hydrants. In these instances, we must bring our own backup water. These water tenders carry 3,000 gallons of water and can refill our engines when they run low. Often, we will use multiple tenders to bring water from a distant source to the fire scene.

These apparatuses provide an emergency scene with ladders and a multitude of tools. Bend Fire & Rescue has a ladder truck that can reach 100 feet into the air. This ladder also has a nozzle at the end, allowing us to flow over 1,000 gallons a minute from an elevated position. Ladder trucks respond to complex emergencies due to their versatility. They are one of our primary extrication vehicles, equipped with the jaws of life and other powerful hydraulic tools to move and cut metal. They respond to medical emergencies like ambulances or fire engines, and their crew is highly trained in technical rescue, including rope rescue, trench rescue, and confined space rescue.

The heavy rescue is a specialty rescue toolbox on wheels. Much like the ladder truck, it is designed to assist crews in unique or technical rescue situations. Ice rescue, rope rescue, urban search and rescue, trench rescue, and confined space rescues are just some of the scenarios this toolbox is designed to assist with. It also has tools like the jaws of life and large air cylinders used to fill air packs on scenes where firefighters must work in hostile environments for long periods.

Sometimes when people call 911, they may not be having a life-threatening emergency but still need help with a problem they can’t solve. Our support response vehicle provides those services while leaving a fire engine available for the next emergency. These vehicles respond to various types of calls, from fire alarms and broken sprinkler pipes to non-emergent service calls. The person who operates this vehicle is highly trained in fire investigation and often stays behind once the fire is out to discover what caused it.

These vehicles respond with highly trained individuals to command the crews working on an emergency. They are essentially the eyes and ears for the crews working in hazardous conditions. They develop the plan to resolve a large emergency and then assign the fire engine and ambulance companies to the right positions to safely and successfully mitigate the problem. They are responsible not only for the plan but also for keeping track of everyone working in the hazardous area, ensuring all our firefighters can safely resolve an emergency and be ready for the next one.