Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Along with being a little shinier, Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory’s new ladder truck is a bit longer and heavier.
Thursday afternoon, the fire territory had a push-in ceremony for the fire truck at station 13, 2204 E. Center St., Warsaw.
“It’s replacing our old ladder truck that we had for 20 years, so this one is, obviously, brand new,” said Lt. Brent Fifer, who chairs the fire territory’s truck/equipment committee. “It is bigger than the other one. As far as weight-wise it’s 86,000 pounds. The other one was 76,000 pounds. It’s longer than the other one. The other one was like 49 feet, this one is 52.”
Fifer said the new one has a larger water tank and can hold 450 gallons. The old truck only had a 300-gallon water tank.
The new one seats five firefighters and has state-of-the-art technology inside. The ladder is the standard 100 feet.
“It’s got more capabilites than the other one. The other one had some limitations if you have it off the ground in certain ways, whatever, where this one doesn’t. You can do all kinds of stuff with it,” he said.
The new ladder truck has a bigger motor - it has 605 horsepower Cummins in it.
The advancement in technology is going to be a big help to the firefighters. Fifer said, “The better the technology, the easier it is for us to do our jobs, basically.”
With more lifting capacity, more people can fit in the bucket. It’s got the same size pump on it as the old truck, but Fifer said it rides better and the suspension on it will help it to last longer just from truck wear and tear.
The fire territory has already done quite a bit of training on the new truck and will continue with training on it. Smeal - the manufacturer of the truck - provided training to all the firefighters.
As of Thursday, Fifer estimated it’s only been in use for maybe two weeks.
“It’s been on a handful of calls, but not a ton yet,” he stated. “For being as big and heavy as it is, it rides really nice. It drives nice.”
The aerial ladder is one of the biggest trucks that is built for the fire service. Fifer said they also are one of the most expensive because of their size.
“We tried to replace what we had. We didn’t try to do anything that’s going to cost more or whatever,” Fifer said. “This truck, when we signed the contract, was like $1.8 million, roughly. To build the same truck today, the same exact truck today, just because of inflation, the way things go, it would be over $2 million - the same exact truck. Luckily, we built it when we did and we saved some money that way.”
From the time it was ordered to delivery, it took about 1-1/2 years.
WWFT Fire Chief Joel Shilling welcomed everyone to the push-in ceremony.
“On behalf of the fire territory, we want to thank you all for coming here and helping us put our new apparatus in service,” Shilling said. “I’d like to thank the truck committee and the employees of the fire territory for working through getting this, the whole build process, specking it out for us and getting us an apparatus that’s going to last us hopefully 20 years.”
On top of that, Shilling said there was a lot of work that had to be done to transfer the equipment off the old truck to the new one. “We couldn’t have done it without them,” he said, asking for a round of applause for those employees.
He then explained the history of the push-in ceremony.
“Back when the apparatuses were horse-drawn, the horses couldn’t back the apparatuses back into the bay so what happened was they would pull the horse and apparatus up. They unhitched the horses, and then the firemen would have to physically push the truck in, so that’s what the significance of this is. So, a little bit of history of the fire department and then a ceremony to put the apparatus in service,” Shilling explained.
