New Duluth Fire Truck Warns Motorists It’s Near

DULUTH, Minn. — Duluth’s brand new $1.3 million fire truck was on full display Thursday so firefighters could show the rig’s state-of-the-art technology designed to save lives.

Quint 4, out of the UMD fire station, is equipped with a system that notifies vehicles that the fire truck is nearby. An alert pops up on a vehicle’s information screen on year 2018 and newer vehicles. It also works on navigation systems like Apple Maps and Waze, which display warnings and play audio alerts.

“It will alert the driver. It will tone down your stereo and will actually pop up an alert saying an emergency vehicle is approaching,” said Duluth  Deputy Fire Chief Mike Consie. “It will also when they arrive on the scene and set the parking brake, it sets up a geo-fence around it so any vehicles that’s going to be intersecting that fire truck is alerted that there is an emergency scene ahead.”

Consie said the alert system is especially valuable when the department is on busy I-35.

The fire truck also has an idle reduction system to save on gas.  When the truck is parked, the engine shuts down and the needed systems onboard run off of Lithium Ion batteries.

Finally, the truck’s 107-foot ladder — the tallest within the department’s fleet — deploys in half the time as the old one.