Truck No. 31 arrived mid-morning on May 27 as a handful of firefighters with the Lawrencetown Volunteer Fire Department waited to see what Lantz Truck Body in Port Williams had built them this time. Chief Mike Stoddart, Deputy Chief Andy Lowe, and Captain Mike Lockett were on the committee that designed the truck, replacing the old walk-in GMC with a new crew-cab Freightliner.
Lockett showed firefighters some of the features of the truck – basically a giant toolbox on wheels that holds all sorts of gear from air tanks, saws, hydraulic cutting tools, to jack stands, red safety cones, pipe, and even latex gloves.
“It’s a four-door Freightliner chassis,” said Lockett. “It’s got a 6,000-psi cascade bottle system on it for filling our self-contained breathing apparatus – that’s a four-bottle system. It has a command tower light for lighting up scenes, so some good nighttime vision. And it has a 25-kilowatt generator set on it as well.”