Rescue/Mini-Pumper join the firefighting team

At the City Council meeting on Thursday, Jan. 25, Fire Chief Marc Lowery reported the department had replaced a 12-year-old truck they often had trouble with, and we’re re-organizing the duties of apparatus.

“Prior to this purchase, we had a rescue truck and a brush truck,” he said. "A brush truck is a simple truck to fight brush/grass/wildland fires with. It has a small water tank. In times past, we would use it a lot more with our rescue truck to help suppress fire at an accident scene in the county. Running two trucks took more manpower. So we found one truck we can use for both services.”

“The team has been looking for more than a year for a different truck to replace the brush truck,” he said. “We use a company that is a broker for new trucks. We knew if we built one, it would take a couple of years and be expensive,” Lowery said.

“Technically, this is a used truck. We found this 2021 demo truck that had never been in service at a fire department. Each fire department likes to build a truck with the size of boxes that work for their tools. So this time, we will make our tools fit the boxes already provided. It has a 500-gallon pump and holds 500 gallons of water,” he said.

The International chassis with a Deep South manufactured box was a demo truck. “Ironically, when they built this demo truck, they put amber lights on it,” he laughed. “We could have used it as a snow plow a few weekends ago.”

Lowery said it was good they had to wait for the correct red lights.

“That gave us time to install the radio systems and place our decals on the truck. The guys must also mount their tools and install everything department-specific into that truck. It was a blessing in disguise; we didn’t have to be in a big hurry to get it on the road.”

The department traded the existing rescue truck and brush truck for the new one. The brush truck is already gone, but the rescue truck has to stay here until the new one is in service.

A couple of the firefighters love installing radio systems. “We actually have three kinds of communication radios. There is a dispatch radio and a radio where we can talk to rural fire departments and ambulance services. The third one is the AWIN (Arkansas Wireless Information Network) radio, so we can communicate with dispatch anywhere in the state. This truck has the possibility of going so far out of town for a motor vehicle accident that it might not reach our dispatch radio tower in town.”

Lowery said he was glad to have the input of two division chiefs and the three battalion chiefs. “It was a group decision. We all do things together.”