First to the fire.

Fire fighting was among the first specialist roles Rover catalogued. From the late 1940s the company fitted out Series I chassis in-house as complete appliances, buying in pumps and equipment: a pump driven off the centre power take-off, hose reels, ladders, extinguishers and on some vehicles a 40-gallon first-aid tank, first on the 80-inch and then on the longer chassis. Survivors delivered new to works brigades — the printers Hazell, Watson & Viney among them — are shown at museums almost invariably in red.

The type travelled. The Uskela volunteer brigade in Salo, Finland, preserved its long-wheelbase Series I with suction hoses carried on the bonnet, and the RAF put blue-grey 88-inch soft tops lettered AIRCRAFT CRASH RESCUE on its airfields to replace the wartime crash-rescue Jeeps as the first-away vehicle. Rover soon found brigades wanted more than the factory could economically build, and in the mid-1950s Carmichael & Sons of Worcester, an established fire engineering house, became its approved converter.

The Series II era took the fire Land Rover into the rough. The first Forest Rover, XLE 762, was a 1959 Series II 109 rebuilt by Roadless Traction on 10×28 tractor tyres and supplied to the Forestry Commission with a fire-tender rear body and EXPERIMENTAL VEHICLE sign-writing — one of only nine made. In Australia the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority protected its camps with a 1960 109 bodied by Firefly of London, and the volunteer New South Wales Bush Fire Brigade ran a 1969 109 pickup with a slip-on unit on a flat tray and a red beacon: the ancestor of the Rural Fire Service tanker.

Spain went its own way. Santana's forward-control 1300, the Linares-built 1.3-tonne truck, was bodied by FIMESA of Madrid and others as a light appliance for municipal and forest brigades from 1967, with single and double-cab versions; Madrid's fire museum and the Lleida motor museum each keep one.

The 1970s belonged to the cab-over. Marte of Austria built Vaduz's Pikettfahrzeug on a Series IIB Forward Control in 1970; HCB-Angus bodied a 1973 IIB FC for the Army Fire Service with a rear Godiva pump driven off the transfer-box PTO; and when Land Rover stopped making its own Forward Control, Bates of Evesham rebuilt six-cylinder 1-ton 109 chassis as cab-over pumps with a four-seat crew cab — the Northern Ireland Fire Brigade took 44. Santana's 2000, the two-tonne successor to the 1300 launched in 1979, listed fire-fighting equipment among its factory body options.

On the airfields the RAF's third-generation crash truck arrived in 1972: TACR1, built by HCB-Angus on uprated 1-ton 109 chassis, a three-man rapid-intervention truck with a brush guard fitted so it could crash straight through the emergency gates. Around 89 were made. From 1977 the six-wheeled TACR2 began replacing it: Carmichael's 6×4 Range Rover conversion, V8-powered, carrying 200 gallons of premixed foam, bodied by Gloster Saro, Carmichael and HCB-Angus and reputed to be one of the fastest appliances of its day. Carmichael's civilian Redwing FT/5 on the Series III, meanwhile, served the Cape Hill brewery's works brigade.

County brigades kept a Land Rover for the jobs a big pump could not reach. Gwent's 1982 Series III 109 appliance, in blue-lit old-siren livery with side lockers and roof ladders, went on to industrial work and the rally field; in Portugal the Campo de Besteiros volunteers ran a Carmichael-bodied Series III with twin hose reels and overhead suction-pipe storage.

Carmichael was still at it when the coil-sprung 110 arrived: a 1987 V8 hydrant vehicle for the Sellafield nuclear plant, rebuilt two years later by Storm Fire Protection into a CAA-approved Category 2 airfield fire engine that served Turweston aerodrome until retirement. North Wales Fire and Rescue's Bangor-based Water Incident Unit put a snorkel and a black inflatable on a red Defender 110 for floods and river rescues in Gwynedd.

The Defender age produced specialists rather than pumps. Land Rover Special Vehicles and GB Fire built a one-off 6×6 crew-cab appliance in 1998 to protect the company's own Gaydon proving ground for nearly two decades. Invicta Fire & Rescue put a firefighting skid on a 2002 110 pickup for helipad cover; Cleveland Fire Brigade's 2005 Defender 130 carried a demountable box of rope- and water-rescue gear; the Falkland Islands' 'Rescue 1' is a 130 light rescue appliance run from Stanley. Belgium's Kalmthout volunteers had AB Technics build a 130 double-cab for reconnaissance on the country's most fire-prone heathland.

Spain and France added military emergency units. The Unidad Militar de Emergencias, created in 2005, took some 225 Santana Aníbals in army green with high-visibility yellow chevrons; the Armée de l'Air's base fire squadrons run a Defender 130 command post bodied by Essonne Sécurité in fire-service red, doubling as an NRBC detection vehicle.

In the Mediterranean the Defender 110 is the vehicle of first attack. The Forestiers-Sapeurs of Corse-du-Sud patrol the maquis from Ajaccio in a yellow double-cab Tdi with a canvas tilt and a rotating beacon; the Office National des Forêts in the Var runs yellow 110s with DFCI markings and cab protection as forest-fire patrol and logistics vehicles; and Croatia's volunteer brigade DVD Blaguša keeps a red 110 station wagon with a white roof and full-length equipment rack.