A curiosity when looking through the photos at the aircraft crash site in Elmina is the presence of a neon yellow fire truck with the Malaysia Airports logo on the side of the body. That is the Rosenbauer Panther CA-5, the fire truck of choice in many airports around the world. In Malaysia alone, there are over two dozen trucks around the airports in the country.
The question is – why the truck is there when the normal red fire truck is already on site?
Big Yellow Engine
The Rosenbauer Panther CA-5 hails from Austria and is a massive vehicle – the units we have in Malaysia is 11,640mm or over 11m long and it has a 695hp engine which can propel it from 0-80KM/h in about 26 seconds. That is with the fully loaded weight capacity of 38 tons – including the water in the tanks. Incredibly, the truck has a top speed of 140 km/h.
The supplier for the Panthers in Malaysia is UMW Equipment Sdn Bhd.
Even with the big size, it only needs four operators – a driver and three additional operators. Based on the location of the crash site, the truck was assigned from Subang Airport, where several units are based for any eventualities, such as a plane emergency or in this case, a crash.
Special Suppression
The truck has a 6×6 all-wheel drive and could carry 10,000-14,000 litres of water, 1,000-2,000 litres of foaming agent and up to 500 kg of powder. The foaming agent is important as foam is the primary agent used for extinguishing aircraft fires.
The foam fire suppression consists of a combination of bubbles formulated specifically for aircraft fires. The jet fuel used by aircraft has a higher flashpoint and is like diesel. As we know diesel fires can be harder to extinguish than petrol fires – so specially formulated fire suppression is needed.
The special foam is why the truck was at the crash site as it is specifically designed to combat jet fuel fires. Thankfully, no major fire incident happened due to the crash.
