A new Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service (MCFRS) water tanker has been deemed a total loss after it was involved in a rollover collision with a car Saturday that injured a firefighter and a civilian driver in Potomac, according to fire department officials on Monday.
MCFRS Assistant Chief Public Information Officer Dan Ogren told Bethesda Today on Monday that while he did not have an update on the injured civilian driver, the firefighter has since returned home to his family. Both the civilian, who has not been identified, and the firefighter were transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Ogren said the firefighter, who has not been identified, is “doing fine … some sore bumps, bruises, all those things, but I’m not aware of any serious injuries to him.”
The tanker had been in service for a few weeks before the collision, Ogren said. He noted tankers can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and didn’t know how soon it could be replaced.
“The people are doing well, the rest of the stuff, you know, we will figure all that out later,” Ogren said, noting that the incident could have been a lot worse due to the tanker’s heavy weight while carrying a load of water.
The collision involving the tanker and the car occurred shortly before 8 p.m. in the 9500 block of River Road between Persimmon Tree Road and Newbridge Drive, according to MCFRS officials.
The events leading to the crash are still under investigation by Montgomery County police and the fire department’s “safety section,” Ogren said, noting the tanker had its lights on and sirens blaring. Before the incident, the tanker was en route to a vehicle fire on the outer loop of the Beltway.
“I know that area is kind of rough. Sometimes the intersection doesn’t have great visibility, but yeah, we don’t have all those details yet,” Ogren said. “But it is evident that [the vehicles] did hit each other and the tanker did roll, which was most likely caused by him trying to avoid the vehicle.”
A water tanker is a firefighting apparatus that carries roughly 3,500 gallons of water and some equipment, according to Ogren.
It is primarily used to respond to fires in rural areas that are not serviced by municipal water companies and may not have fire hydrants. The tankers can also be used in more urban environments if a fire hydrant’s pressure is low or if needed to extinguish vehicle fires on highways, according to Ogren.
“If we have a fire on the interstate, Beltway, I-270, the [Intercounty Connector], those have limited access to municipal water. There are fire hydrants that we can access … [but] there are a lot of obstacles,” Ogren said.
Ultimately, the destroyed water tanker was not needed for the Beltway vehicle fire as the blaze was “not anywhere near as big a deal as initially thought,” Ogren said.
Challenging to operate
Water tankers are known to be a challenging vehicle to operate, according to Ogren. With a large water load, the vehicle can weigh about 30 tons and experience a shift in weight. This can result in a more unstable vehicle that takes longer to turn and break, Ogren said.
“It’s one of the most unstable vehicles that we drive on a daily basis,” Ogren said. “… They also tend to be kind of tall, so they’re top heavy [and] can be more prone to rollovers, like we saw in this instance.”
With the tanker now out of commission, the fire department is using one of its reserve vehicles, according to Ogren. Typically, nine water tankers are in service across the county at any given time and two are held in reserve.
Despite being down a water tanker, there is no major change in the department’s firefighting capacity, Ogren said. However, he noted the loss of the tanker could impact the county’s reserve fleet, which now has only one water tanker.
