What real use is a fire engine with a flammable paper air filter and plastic fittings? In 2003, Canberra's firefighters found out the hard way.
Four years before the January 2003 firestorm, a bushfire broke out at Smith's Gap, west of Bungendore, which highlighted major issues with Canberra's $350,000 Scania fire appliances.
On March 13, 1998, Bravo 1 - a near-new Scania pumper truck - was dispatched from Fyshwick fire station to help out the NSW RFS with a growing bushfire threat.
The big Scania was sent to a farm called Ratcliffe to protect the main house, which was under direct attack from the fire.
But as the fire grew in intensity and embers flew through the air, the truck's turbo-diesel engine which drives the pumping system coughed, spluttered, and died. Then it, too, caught fire.
Within minutes, the ACT firefighters, several of them recruits with very little experience, were in deep trouble. They had no pump to drive their equipment, and no vehicle in which to escape.
Fortunately, a volunteer unit arrived and helped out.
With the pumper's diesel engine greedy for more air as the pumps were engaged, embers were sucked into the air intake, which set the paper filter on fire and had melted the plastic housing. The turbocharger bearings, too, were damaged.
Embarrassingly, the same truck failed again 10 days later attending a fire at the Federal Golf Course.
Reports were handed up to the fire commissioner at the time, but the limited rectification work - addressing problems similar to those which fire services in West Australia and Queensland experienced - didn't go far enough.
As was highlighted in the McLeod enquiry after 2003, "as events on 18 January demonstrated ... when the appliances were exposed to extensive ember attack the modification did not eliminate the problem".
Urban fire appliances, it was argued later, are not usually exposed directly to fire. In a customary urban firefighting role, they sit off a house or commercial fire and run out their hoses.
But when the bush capital needed it most, almost half the available major brigade appliances failed.
Five urban pumpers were disabled or burnt out during the January firestorm.
And how close some firefighters came to being killed or injured as a result of these failures was evident in video footage shot by a cameraman from the back seat of District Officer Darrell Thornthwaite's Toyota LandCruiser as he weaved his way down a fire-walled suburban road.
The urgent radio call came from Bravo 3, a Scania pumper from the Phillip station.
"[This is] Bravo 3, engine warning lights on, engine's cut out; we have no engine!" they called.
Luckily, Thornthwaite was right there to rescue them. As the driver pulled up and fire blazed around the car, three firefighters leapt into the Toyota's rear seat, yelling "go, go, go".
Thornthwaite turned to ask: "Is the pumper door open?"
To which an officer replied flatly: "The pumper's f*cked."
