View the Alcatraz Fire Engine

Fire has been a threat on Alcatraz Island since the construction of the fortress in the 1850s. Fear that the fort’s wooden prison buildings would burn with the prisoners inside led the military to construct the concrete prison building in the early 1900s. The fire engine arrived on the island in 1934 via the Panama Canal for the newly renovated federal penitentiary. The vehicle was manufactured by the Diamond T Motor Car Company of Chicago, Illinois and the Howe Fire Apparatus Company of Anderson, Indiana, which built the “Defender” pumper. The vehicle has a 130 horsepower Hercules engine and can pump 500 gallons of water per minute. It is designed specifically for the island, with a narrower wheel base to make the sharp turns. The engine saw action a number of times during the penitentiary years for small fires on the island like one in 1947 in the laundry of the New Industries Building where a large pile of towels had caught fire. Prison guards manned the Diamond T and raced to quench the flames. One night in 1939, the siren sounded and three guards sped up the hill in the engine only to learn that the alarm was for an escape attempt! The engine also flashed its lights and blared its sirens to celebrate New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July for the island’s residents. The Diamond T was in sorry shape, vandalized and damaged by the elements, when the National Park Service arrived on the island in 1972. In 2003, the National Park Service and the ferry company spent $100,000 to restore the vehicle. The work was done by men incarcerated at Indian Springs State Prison near Las Vegas, Nevada. The wooden ladder was donated by the San Francisco Fire Department.