Forest firefighting concept vehicle wins 2011 IDEA Gold Award

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Morita Holdings Corp has been awarded a 2011 IDEA Gold Award – the highest possible award – in the Commercial and Industrial Products category for its forest firefighting concept vehicle. The International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) are the preeminent design awards in the United States.

The award-winning forest firefighting concept vehicle is a future prototype fire truck developed through the joint efforts of Morita’s technical, development, and design teams. The goal of the concept vehicle’s design is to solve many of the problems encountered when fighting large-scale forest fires, which occur frequently around the world.

Communication is critical when fighting forest fires because the fires tend to change direction moment by moment due to weather and forest conditions. The concept vehicle is outfitted with all the advanced data and telecommunication functions to serve as a local communications base as well as with the ability to navigate through rough roads and fight fires while on the move. And because it is difficult to locate water sources in the midst of a forest fire, it is equipped with a compressed air foam system (CAFS) developed by Morita. Using only a small amount of water, CAFS gives the vehicle superb fire extinguishing capability.

In awarding the IDEA Gold Award, the judges praised the design of the forest firefighting concept truck: “The wildfire truck illustrates the power of a bold, refined prototype to test innovative thinking by richly probing a market space with a visceral, hands-on experience of the features and brand,” they said in a statement.