"It's not something we're required by law to do," Allen said. "It's like the county spending millions of dollars on the ambulance service every year. We made a decision, a moral decision as opposed to a legal decision, that we were going to do that. The same line of thinking applies to the firetrucks. It's a life safety issue and a property safety issue for the people in the rural areas to have up-to-date firetrucks that can be there for a house fire or a brush fire."
The county began buying fire apparatus on a regular basis in the late 1970s, according to Fire Marshal Marc Trollinger. The fleet had grown to 110 vehicles of different types before the county adopted a plan to reduce the number in the fire service by purchasing combination pumper-tanker trucks. The trucks are provided to the 27 fire departments depending on need, he said.