Fire trucks and ambulances recalled: the screen that runs the lights and sirens can go dark

Safety

On a modern fire engine or ambulance, a single electronic node or touchscreen is the switchboard for the equipment that matters most on a call: exterior emergency lights, sirens, and — on pumpers — pump-mode. Four of these six recalls describe that switchboard failing. KME and Spartan Fire use the same sentence: a node “may become unresponsive and cause a loss of functionality of connected components, such as exterior lighting and pump-mode.” Horton and Farber Specialty use a matching one: the touchscreen display “may stop responding to touch commands or fail to power on.”

The stated consequences are the same across all four: a loss of exterior lights makes the apparatus less visible to other drivers and increases crash risk, and losing pump-mode or other emergency equipment can delay a response and increase the risk of injury. In plain terms, the failure does not stop the truck — it can silence the systems that tell everyone else to get out of its way, and the systems the crew needs when it arrives.

KME's recall (26V-657) covers two 2024 vehicles — a CV515 SFA 4x4 and a Severe Service unit. Spartan Fire's (26V-654) covers exactly one 2024 Metrostar. The language in the two filings is word-for-word identical, and both remedies run through the same supplier: Fire Research Corporation will work with each builder to replace the nodes, free of charge.

The ambulance side is bigger. Halcore Group's Horton recall (26V-533) covers 545 Type I, Type III and Critical Care ambulances from 2025–2026 — the largest group in this roundup — with the touchscreen failure preventing activation of exterior emergency lights and other emergency equipment. Farber Specialty's recall (26V-395) covers three vehicles: a 2025 45 MCXCR and 2025–2026 HX620 SBA 6X4 emergency vehicles. Both fixes are a firmware update plus a power-line repair — Weldon Division of Akron handles Horton's, and Farber works with Akron Brass.

E-One's recall (26V-652) is a different electrical failure on 301 fire trucks — 2024–2026 Typhoon N, 2025–2026 Cyclone N and 2026 Cyclone II. The positive power supply may be loose, causing the wiring harness and busbar to overheat, which increases the risk of a fire. It is not E-One's first apparatus-electronics recall: in March 2024 the builder recalled Typhoon and Cyclone trucks (24V-194) for a multiplex node firmware fault that could leave electrical circuits overloaded.

Sutphen's recall (26V-661) is mechanical: on 410 fire trucks from 2021 equipped with Cummins L9 diesel engines, the remote fuel filter hoses may separate from the fitting, causing a fuel leak and an engine stall. A leak near an ignition source increases fire risk; a stall increases crash risk. Sutphen has filed on this hardware before — a July 2021 recall (21V-581) covered fuel leaks from hoses at the remote fuel filter on 2020–2021 trucks.