Starting in early January, all fire engines will be stocked with more medicine and equipment to provide advanced life support to patients.

As of Friday afternoon, the fire department had responded to 9,795 calls since Jan. 1. Some 8,211 of them—or about 83.8 percent—were medical calls.

“What we've found is our ambulances are getting busier every year,” said Deputy Chief Jim Ponkauskas.

Increasingly, fire engines are reaching medical calls before ambulances. That's because ambulances can be at a different incidents when calls come in, which means fire engines are sometimes closer to medical emergencies, Ponkauskas said.

With that in mind, the fire department administration wants fire engines equipped to handle a variety of medical calls.

The new equipment will allow paramedics aboard fire engines to better respond to medical emergencies until an ambulance arrives. Each engine will have a medical box that includes IV fluids and medicine to respond to cardiac arrest and opiate overdoses, among other things, said Capt. Tom Brunner.

Ladder trucks typically have a 20-year lifespan, and the one at Station No. 4 on Municipal Drive is in its 19th year, Wingate said. It still works, but if it is not replaced soon, it could count against the Fire Department’s insurance rating, he said.

If the Fire Department were to order a brand new truck right now, it likely would cost $1.2 million and take 1½ years to build, Wingate said. The Fire Department has found a truck with a 100-foot ladder already built and loaded with the equipment Hoover needs and available for sale, he said.

The manufacturer is Kovatch Mobile Equipment, which is a company the Hoover Fire Department has used before, Wingate said. The truck has a platform at the top of the ladder and two water cannons that can process 2,000 gallons per minute, which is more processing capacity than any other truck the department has, he said.

If the City Council approves the purchase of the new truck, Wingate said he plans to keep the existing truck at Station No. 4 as a reserve truck.

There are two other ladder trucks in service right now: a 75-foot ladder truck at Station No. 7 in Inverness and a 75-foot ladder truck at Station No. 10 in Ross Bridge, Wingate said. The department also has a 1982 ladder truck in reserve that is stored at the Inverness station, he said.

The department tried to sell the 1982 ladder truck, but no departments wanted it because using a truck that age hurts on inspection scores, he said. It sickened him to sell it for $1,000 when it’s a fairly serviceable truck, so he kept it in reserve, Wingate said.

So, when the station received a $200,000 grant the community was thrilled.

On average, the Dawn VFD responds to 20-30 calls a year.

 Fire Chief Roy Johnson said the need for new updated trucks was urgent.

The older trucks were not dependable any more and needed constant repairs.

"It's always nice to have something you don't have to work on every time you take it out," Johnson said. "They will run quite a while before we have any real problems."

One of the new 2016 model is replacing a truck from 1971. 

It has a 1,500 gallon water tank and a front monitor control station. 

Johnson said both trucks have already responded to a fire and worked well, but said the fire crew did make a change to one of the trucks.

"If you notice on the new truck we did put the bumper nozzle on the side so somebody doesn't actually have to stand there and hold a hose and we can be more effective that way with less energy expended and our firefighters won't get so tired," Johnson said. 

Early Monday morning, five vehicles were broken into and three guns were stolen at Forsyth County Fire Station 10 at 3860 Old Atlanta Road, near Lambert High School.

“Five different vehicles belonging to the fire staff at Station 10 were broken into, forced windows and broken windows,” said Dep. Doug Rainwater, a spokesman for the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office.“Of the five vehicles, three of them parked overnight had guns in them, and of course they all belong to firefighters working that shift.”

Rainwater said the break-ins happened between 1-7 a.m. on Monday.

Fire Division Chief Jason Shivers said firefighters returned from a call around 1 a.m. on Monday and nothing had been broken into at that time, but noticed the damage during a shift change at 7 a.m.

"When they came back from a call just after 1 a.m., they could see the parking lot, and they know everything was fine then, so it had to be between then and shift change,” Shivers said. “When they came out at shift change, they found broken windows, and disarray in the vehicle interiors where someone had gone through them."

Shivers said no electronics or other items were stolen from the vehicles and there was “no indication they made entry into the station or fire apparatus.”