During the Florianifeier festivity on 4 May 2022, the Provincial Fire Brigade Association of Lower Austria received 17 new Magirus tank pumpers for wildfire applications

The handover was completed in the presence of Provincial Fire Brigade Commander Dietmar Fahrafellner, Diocesan Bishop Dr. Alois Schwarz, Federal Minister Karoline Edtstadler and Deputy Provincial Governor Dr Stephan Pernkopf,

“Climate change is increasingly bringing new demands to the fire service. Vegetation fires are increasing in severity and number and are placing particularly higher demands for the population, for the fire brigades and their equipment. Often, the areas of operation are difficult to access, water sources are not available or hardly accessible and the permanent unpredictability of the fires poses an additional danger”, explains Josef Huber, the Provincial Technology councillor for the Lower Austrian fire brigade association.

The new vehicle concept for the “Forest Firefighting Vehicle”, HLF2-WB, is based on the current existing recommendations for forest firefighting vehicles – coupled with the requirements of the HLF2 according to the construction guidelines of the Lower Austrian Fire Brigade Association, in order to achieve the highest possible benefit and operational utility in everyday use. The main differences to the standard HLF2: all-terrain chassis, extensive equipment which is specially designed for forest fighting and vegetation fires, midship-pump configuration in conjunction with a self-protection extinguishing system, additional heat-protection for aggregates, a cabin with roll-over protection as well as a modular designed interior to increase multiple use of the vehicle.

The ” fast attach vehicle” VFA is built on a Ford Ranger with an innovative exchangeable modular structure. In the basic configuration, a vegetation firefighting module is equipped with tank, centrifugal pump and engine-unit and forest firefighting equipment. The simple module change, the storage possibility and respectively the flexible worktable is realized with a multi-adjustable, mobile work/logistics module. Besides to the forest firefighting module, one of the vehicles is equipped with a commander-module.

The HLF2-WB are equipped with a Treibmatic winch and the VFA are equipped with an electric winch.

With these vehicles, in addition to the forest fire QUAD’s already in service, the Provincial Fire Brigade Association has now a complete and consistent forest firefighting unit, which has already been used in the firefighting operation in Hirschwang an der Rax (district of Neunkirchen). On this occasion, the vehicles have already passed a successful baptism of fire.

“It’s a special honour that the vehicle concept literally met the requirements even before the official ceremonial handover. Now, we can book a follow-up order for additional 8 HLF2-WB and 8 VFA vehicles”, states Christian Reisl, Managing Director of Magirus Lohr GmbH.