The Hartford County Fire School runs this 1997 KME that previously served the State Fire Academy. CT has the Connecticut State Fire Academy that oversee Firefighter training and certification state wide running a variety of course at their main campus, as well as host sites throughout the state. In addition the State has nine Regional Fire Schools that operate facilities to allow department to train at. The Regional School mainly handle most of the Firefighter I and II classes for the states volunteer departments.


Simsbury originally ran this 1994 E-One Cyclone that has since been donated to the Hartford County Regional Fire School.


Simsbury also gave Hartford County this 1994 International / Ranger rescue unit.


The Yale New Haven Hospital / AMR Critical Care Unit.


Southington's DARE car.

This 1994 Pierce Arrow originally served Berlin CT, and is now at the Hartford County Fire School awaiting disposal.


The State of Connecticut operates a handful of Fire Departments at several of its facilities, among them is the Southbury Training School. STS was built as a state facility of special needs persons back in the early 1900's. The complex has over 125 buildings on 1600 acres and is completely independent with everything from its own power and sewage to craft shops and laundry facilities. In recent years the state has been out placing the residents of STS to group homes and other such operations and gradually scaling back the operations at STS. The still maintain a small combination Fire Brigade on the campus which has two engines and two ambulances.
Engine 1 is this Grumman Fire Cat.

State 2-3 is this Ford / Road Rescue Type III box.


In March my boys and I stopped in the Westerley RI fire house to trade patches and found this impeccably maintained Seagrave 70th anniversary rig in the back of the bays.


West Hartford Engine 5 was running this 2014 KME pumper. WHFD is an all career department which operates out of five stations for the community of 64,000.


More to come in the days to follow!

Engine Co. 4 in the Brass City runs this 2000 Seagrave wagon that appears to have had has some hard service on it. Waterbury is known as the Brass City due to the fact at one time they where the brass producing capital; of America.
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United Technologies has several facilities through out Connecticut producing a variety of products for the Aerospace and Defense industry and maintain in house fire protection as several of these complexes. Here we see the Squad truck packed with equipment for technical rescue and haz-mat that is based out of their Windsor Lock plant.

They also field this Ford/Road Rescue Ambulance

Here we find Wolcott EMS's 2019 Ford F450/Lifeline in the annual Little League parade.

Wolcott's 2017 E-One Cyclone assigned to Engine 2 was right behind it.
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I spotted this E-One 75 quint that appears to be a demo rig outside a local hotel on day.


While we are in the for sale section, I found these Bearcats being transported for delivery in a Wal-Mart parking lot.


This 2000 Pierce Dash is operated by Cheshire, once known as the bedding plant capital due to the numerous farms and nursery's that call the town home, it has transferred from a farming community into a fairly affluent suburb of about 25,000 people. Engine 7 was attending a live burn at the Wolcott Regional Fire School.


Waiting watchfully on the front ramp of Bristol's Fire Headquarters we find Engine 1's 2015 Pierce Enforcer. Bristol is a city of over 60,000 people and has a fully career department fielding five engines and a single truck out of five stations. The BFD is an anomaly as they are one of the few career departments in the state that do not run EMS first responder.


In the early 2000's the State of Connecticut purchased a number of Decontamination Trailers and placed them in various fire departments across the state. As the trailers where delivered it became apparent many of the departments lacked vehicles with the proper rating to tow the trailers so a grant was used to buy a Prime Mover for each of the trailers. The Prime Movers are 2005 and 2006 Freightliner / Pierce trucks. Each department is free to use the Prime Mover as they need so long as they make it available to respond with the trailer if requested. This one once served UConn an is not sitting at the State Fire Academy.

On a cold and rainy mother's day I stumbled upon Cheshire Engine 1 sitting patiently on the ramp out front its quarters.


Not your typical fire apparatus but the Hartford County Fire School has this grad-all lift truck. The truck is used to place and remove burn cribs from the upper stories of the burn building, move or flip vehicles for extrication training and other such details that save peoples backs. The Hartford County School is fortunate enough to be located on the same grounds as the State Fire Academy, this affords HCFS the ability to have a few more perks then the other 8 schools due not incurring all the cost of running such a facility. In exchanges some of their special equipment such as this is also used by the State Academy.


While at the Academy grounds we find that the 1996 Sutphen 100 ladder truck they own had an update of its roof being repainted. This is the oldest rig maintained by the Academy and am sad to say I can recall taking classes there when it was just delivered and even prior to it being built.


Cheshire Engine 4 pumping live fire training at the local fire school. This 1992 Pierce Lance was donated to a town in the Midwest a few months later when it was replaced by a new Pierce. model.


Also present for water supply and attack operations was Wolcott Engine 6. This 2010 Spartan Marion rig sports a 1500 GPM/1000GWT set up. Company 2 in Wolcott was orgianlly founded as the Northend Fire Association.


Only time will tell what other gems await in the coming days.

Hi Brian,
Great photo's, as usual! I have question about Avon's Tanker 5. What it the large 'box' above the pump intakes?
Thanks, Dan

I was wondering the same thing. It's definitely an "add-on". Maybe a place to store numerous jugs of AFFF since there aren't many good size compartments?

Would that be a compartment to hold the water pools to fill up when fighting a fire where there are no hydrants?

Dan & Jim, I'm not sure what they carry in the box above the pump, but yes it was an aftermarket add on.

Greco, I believe the portable pond is carried on top of the rig on the right side behind the red canvas flap visible in Jim's video.

The volunteers of the Cheshire Fire Dept. maintain this immaculate 1915 Ford chemical car for parades and public relations.

After finishing up some extrication training we see Cheshire's Rescue 2, one of two heavy rescue units maintained by this well equipped department that fields a 100% Pierce fleet.


While going to shop at a local mall I find West Hartford's brand new Spartan ERV pumper running what I assumed was a medical inside the mall. If you recall a few shots above Engine Co. 5 was running a 2014 KME, and got an upgrade. This Spartan replaced one of their well worn 1990 E-One hush pumpers.
AMR was also on scene at the Westfarms Mall located at the West Hartford / Farmington line.


Not a Fire Apparatus but none the less I thought many here would appricate the graphics on this cab.

With a population of over 110,000 Waterbury ranks the fifth largest city in Connecticut and ninth largest in New England. In the 1990's the WFD was one of the first department's in New England to establish a Haz-Mat team that is staffed full time. The Crew of Rescue 9 is all trained a Haz-Mat Technicians and utilize this Freightliner / Hackney rig as part of their fleet.

The Brass City like many old New England manufacturing cities has seen it's share of ruff times in recent decades as the loss of industry has created resulting in high unemployment, crime and many other social economic issues in recent years despite increasing call volume and still being a city that has lots of fire duty they have lost companies and are down to only nine stations with a total of eight engines compared to a few decades ago when they had 12 stations and an equal number of engines, Here was see Engine 1 Pierce Arrow clearing the same call as the Haz-Mat unit.


Continuing on in Waterbury we find their Prime Mover acting as Truck 2, yes you heard me acting as a LADDER TRUCK! As I said times are tough in the Bury who staff three truck companies daily, on this particular day two of the four aerials they own where out of service resulting in the move to the Prime Mover. These types of apparatus wow's occur in the city and they have at times placed companies into utility body pick up trucks when things get desperate.


Now for the other end of the spectrum we visit Weston, which is a town of 10,000 people in affluent Fairfield County, in fact Money Magazine has ranked Weston the 9th best place to line in Connecticut and has an average median household income of $325,000. Dispite the money they still manage to maintain a 100% volunteer fire department and ambulance corps. While clearing up a mutual aid fire I snapped this shot of Weston Engine 1 which is a 2005 Pierce Dash set up for water supply with a 2250 Pump, 500 Gallon Water Tank and an impressive 5,000 Feet of LDH as hydrants are scarce in this community.

With bodywork by Lifeline, Weston runs this Ford E series ambulance which was a gift from the Donald E. Offeut Trust.


Only time will come what eye candy will pop up next!

Thanks for starting our new year out with lots of great eye candy Brian!

Thanks anyways Brian, it was worth asking.