In the event of a disaster, manmade or natural, statistics show that most lives will be saved in the first 60 minutes. That's why it's so important for numerous firefighters and rescue personnel to arrive on the scene quickly.

Foster Rescue recently unveiled a major new product—a mini rescue truck that is self-propelled and designed to fit through tiny spaces, such as narrow alleys and the pedestrian doors at an airport.

"States and municipalities have to figure out where they're going to get the necessary rescue surge capacity when disaster strikes," says Bruce Foster, president of Foster Rescue in Waynesboro, PA. "It's pretty tough to fund 10 to 20 half-million-dollar rescue trucks statewide that are just going to sit and wait for the big one."

To help fire departments and emergency responders meet this need for rescue surge capacity in a more economical and practical way, Foster has developed a smaller, lighter, more mobile—and much less expensive—rescue platform called the Auxiliary Rescue Unit (ARU). The ARU contains all the fundamental equipment necessary to launch a rescue—but it is housed in a compact trailer platform that can be pulled by an F-250 pickup truck.

Full Features at a Fraction of the Cost
Heavy rescue trucks can cost up to $750,000, but the ARU costs just $125,000. It comes with a 44 horsepower diesel engine and a 20,000 watt generator to power everything the unit does. That translates to 5,400 watts of light power—strong enough to light up a football field—and both 120 and 240 volts of electrical power, which can be distributed to a disaster scene through two 150-foot reels. The ARU also has most of the major tools of a standard heavy rescue truck, including self-contained breathing apparatuses, air tools, air bags and hydraulic tools.

Oklahoma—where one of the greatest disaster concerns is a level-five tornado striking multiple towns in a row—is the first state to employ ARUs, positioning them at 11 different community fire departments.

"A typical tornado scenario," says Foster, "includes loss of power and lighting and residential building collapse, with roughly 60 minutes to save lives. Oklahoma's new statewide emergency response plan uses the ARU as the backbone, so they now have enough capacity to handle that type of disaster scene."

A New Industry—and Some Outside Assistance
Foster Rescue was born out of Bruce Foster's original business—manufacturing construction trailers. "We were putting light, power and compressed air onto our trailers to meet the needs of builders, and it occurred to us that it was a fairly short leap to meet the needs of the fire rescue industry," he says. "The construction trailer business was tough; margins and barriers to entry were very low. But in the fire rescue industry, we found that barriers to entry and margins were much higher, and we were able to take our expertise and transfer it readily."

Foster says Ben Franklin Technology Partners' investment of $300,000 was essential in completing Foster Rescue's research and development efforts. "Ben Franklin is the nurturing side of the business startup equation," he says. "Our assigned advisor from the Transformations Network, Henry Norment, was terrific. He would lie in bed at night thinking of solutions to problems we faced. He was like one of our partners."

Branching Out with a New Product
Foster Rescue currently employs five and subcontracts some of the fabrication of their units. The company is branching out to international markets in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and just unveiled a major new product at the International Association of Fire Chiefs Show in Atlanta.

"It's a mini rescue truck on a tiny truck chassis that contains many of the capabilities of the ARU, but on a scaled-down version," Foster says. The truck is self-propelled and designed to fit through tiny spaces, such as narrow alleys and the pedestrian doors at an airport. "We've had phenomenal response because there's nothing else like it on the market," Foster says. "People were saying, 'Everybody else is getting bigger and bigger, and you guys are getting smaller and smaller. We could really use that because we can't get our trucks where they need to go'."

 From the October/November 2007 issue