The trucks are models that are no longer useful as first-line trucks for the city, City Manager Jim Landon told Palm Coast City Council members at a council workshop Oct. 31.

Howard Peiffer, a volunteer with the city’s Fire Associates and a former chief of the city’s volunteer fire department, has offered to pay $2,000 himself to ship one of the trucks to the department in Kentucky and plans to go there to teach the firefighters how to use it.

Palm Coast gave a neighboring town in Kentucky a fire apparatus about two years ago, and Peiffer also taught that department how to use its new truck.

"This is going to be designed to accommodate our firefighters that are stationed here 24 hours a day," Fire Chief Cary Williamson said. "While they are here, this is their home. And so there will be some features to the station that will help provide them the comforts of home that they don't have currently."

Kilgore said the town paid $190,000 for the nearly one-acre double lot at 571 Maine Ave. It is located next to Gosline’s Hardware on the Kennebec River side of Maine Avenue, also known as U.S. Route 201 and Route 27.

The current residents, who have lived in a house on the property for decades, have several weeks to vacate the property, Kilgore said. The plan, Kilgore said, is to have the property cleared sometime this fall.

According to the department, in the last 4 years, they have lost 3 firefighters to cancer. Two of those firefighters were Nathaniel Crump and Gavin Wright.

Crump passed away from colon cancer this past July at the age of 30.

“The only thing that linked him to something was the bad things firefighters breathe in on a daily basis when they’re at work,” said Crump