The $250,000 truck is equipped with a turret, controlled by a joystick inside the vehicle, that shoots out water, foam and dry chemical agents. It also has a hose that can spray water and foam manually from outside the truck.

The vehicle can hold 300 gallons of water and 250 pounds of dry chemical agents, but also can be easily maneuvered into fire emergency sites and can respond to medical calls.

“We needed a unit large enough that it can deliver water but to be small enough that we can utilize it for other things,” said North Spartanburg Assistant Fire Chief Brent Lewis. “We wanted it for fires where you can pull up to it, blitz it, then go back in and do a more detailed knockdown.”

Firefighters at the North Spartanburg station on Asheville Highway were trained on the vehicle and given a rundown of its functions Friday. Several firefighters learned how to shoot water and dry chemical agents out of the front turret using a joystick next to the driver’s seat.

North Spartanburg firefighters worked on the custom-designed truck with manufacturer Safe Industries for about a year before it was finished and delivered, said apparatus sales representative Cameron Marler.

Marler said he didn’t know of any other fire truck in the state with a similar design.

“The reason we’re seeing water go out at same time (as the dry chemicals) is because dry chem will only go 25 feet before it’s absolutely disrupted. What we’re doing is, since we’ve got that nozzle right near it, the water and the dry chem are meeting in the air and creating like a pancake effect and being thrown farther,” Marler said.

Gunn ended his 37-year career with the Modesto Fire Department just a few days after I wrote a column about their rejuvenation of the truck, which requires a driver to steer from the rear as well as the one in the front. Whitcomb continues to work on it, and now has it running so well that it takes eye-opening excursions down McHenry Avenue and through the neighborhoods that lead back toward the firehouse near the corner of Briggsmore and McHenry avenues.

Modesto city officials would love to see the old Seagrave – one of only two known trucks of its type west of the Rockies – motoring down I Street during parades, and you can bet the local city pols would be clamoring for the high-profile ride-alongs. It would be a tremendous public relations tool for the city. Restoring it something close to its original grandeur – paint and patina, polished brass and restored ladders and accessories – would be spectacular, too.

Decisions need to be made soon, though. No one – most of all Whitcomb and the others who have worked on it – wants to see the truck left idle, stored in some nondescript warehouse and virtually forgotten again.

After my column appeared, people began stopping by the fire station, located just yards away from where another piece of Modesto’s history, the Burchell Fountain, once gurgled. They wanted a closer look at the truck, purchased by the city in 1928 and used into the 1960s. Many visitors told the firefighters they remembered it fondly from their youth. Some individuals and others representing service clubs, Whitcomb said, offered to contribute money toward restoration. Local body shop owner Brent Burnside met with the fire crew in May to assess what it might take to restore the paint and patina.

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