WILTON – The fire department needs a new first-line pumper to give high-use Engine 7 a rest, according to a report town consultant Paul Ripa gave at Tuesday’s selectmen’s meeting.

Exactly what kind of pumper – a small-cabbed mini-pumper, a tiny one-ton pumper, a larger one with a six-man cab, a pumper with the capacity to pump 1,000 gallons per minute – should be up to Chief Sonny Dunham and selectmen, Ripa said. He recommended a mini-pumper, which would be perfect for responding to the high percentage of calls for fire assistance at car accidents, small car fires and rescue operations.

The definite thing is a new one is needed, Ripa said. “Engine 7 needs to be put back (in the garage) if it’s going to last. You really need a new primary attack pump.”

Ripa’s eight-item report, addressing his assessment of what the town needs for fire equipment, how it should go about replacing old equipment, and where it stands today, also contended water coming from town hydrants wouldn’t be adequate to fight a big fire.

“The water main/fire hydrant system in Wilton is basically useless for firefighting purposes,” Ripa said in a letter addressed to the board. Only a few of the town hydrants are capable of pumping up to 1,200 gallons per minute, which is at least what would be needed to fight a big structure fire in town, he said.

“Water is a living element – it produces sediment,” he said. Pumping at a capacity higher than what the water main and hydrant system can safely handle can pull sediment into the pump and destroy it, Ripa said. And the vacuum created by pumping at that volume “very well could destroy the main,” he said.

The town also needs a new tanker truck eventually, Ripa said, although since the town shares a good one with East Dixfield, it can wait a while.

He qualified his responses by saying he’s looking at the worst-case scenario: a large structure fire.

Selectmen and Dunham received his assessment amicably, but Dunham and board Chairman Rodney Hall disagreed with Ripa’s suggestion of a mini-pumper and said he thought Wilton needed a tanker sooner, rather than later.

“Wilton needs to think about Wilton first,” Dunham said. There are many situations in which depending on mutual aid might be a problem for the fire department and endanger residents, he suggested.

When it became clear that mini-pumpers come in bigger sizes than Dunham and the board thought they did, selectmen voted unanimously to instruct the department, along with Ripa, to start researching mini-pumpers as well as larger ones and report back to the board. “Seems to me if we could get something between a mini-pumper and Engine 7, we’re on the same page,” Selectman Russell Black said.