Date:08/06/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/06/08/stories/2007060816640700.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Two state-of-the-art crash fire tenders for Chennai airport

Staff Reporter

They were purchased from Austria

ACQUISITION: The imported fire tenders being brought to the Chennai airport on Wednesday. — Photo: A. Muralitharan

CHENNAI: The Chennai airport has received two state-of-the-art crash fire tenders, which will be soon inducted into the Airport Fire and Emergency Services.

The tenders, purchased from Austria, arrived at the airport on Wednesday.

The airport sources said the tenders purchased at a cost of Rs. 2.5 crore each, had a seating capacity of four plus one fire crew with a fully air-conditioned crew capsule.

The fire contingencies required least response time to reach the site of fire.

The new vehicles were capable of accelerating from zero to 80 km in 25 seconds, they said.

The crash tenders had a roof-turret nozzle capacity and could discharge up to 5,000 litres extinguishing media per minute.

The vehicle has a tank capacity of 12,000 litres besides 1,500 litres of foam capacity.

A group of men from the Airport Fire and Emergency Services would be provided training and by the end of this month the new vehicles would be added to the fire tenders at the airport, they said.

The Airports Authority would procure five crash tenders of which two arrived on Wednesday.

A senior officer said Chennai airport was the first to receive the imported crash tenders, which would replace the existing ones.

The existing crash tenders were able to store only 7,000 litres of water, he said.

The addition of new tenders was part of the AAI's modernisation programme to meet any fire and rescue requirement at the airport in view of the growing aircraft movements.

The acquisition was also in keeping with the necessity for new large aircraft operations such as Airbus A-380 in the future, the authorities added.