Fire crews will acknowledge that the drone did not locate Kenneth Tracy, but it helped narrow the search field for the ground crews that eventually located him Thursday morning.

Dover Township Deputy Fire Chief Brian Widmayer wears many hats at the volunteer fire department.

His latest one? Drone operator.

It came in handy Thursday.

"[The search crews] knew that we had one, and they knew that it's licensed and insured, so they contacted us right away to get up, and that was due to the helicopters [that] were unable to fly due to the fog," he said.

By 8 a.m., Widmayer had the drone in the air scouring the open fields to search for Tracy.

"The drone can cover a lot more area a lot quicker than ground teams," he said. "The ground teams were concentrating on the thick wooded areas with their dogs as well as their grid searches. The drone was going to take care of the corn fields pretty quickly."

Emergency responders nationwide are catching on to the trend of getting a drone, but Dover Township's is believed to be the first in the area.

“We're using it for search and rescue efforts, site ops for urban search and rescue, building collapses, trench rescues,” Widmayer said.

There are also uses for the drone in a structure fire. For example, Dover Township firefighters who fought the large blaze at a gun store in West York two weeks ago could have used it had the fire happened in daylight.

The 1937 American LaFrance "Tiller" Fire Truck, was purchased new by the Grand Rapids Fire Department along with two fire engines. The truck will be reunited with one of those engines in the museum's collections. 

"We are thrilled to be working with the Grand Rapids Fire Department and a group of volunteers who helped bring this truck back to its home in Grand Rapids," said Tom Dilley, chair of GRPM's collections committee. "At the Public Museum, we cannot think of a better place to preserve the history of this truck, but also share it with the public."

The Tiller truck has an 85-foot extension ladder used to fight fires in tall buildings and with rescues from high spots. The truck is built like a tractor-trailer and incorporates a "Tiller wheel," its namesake, which controls the rear wheels to easily maneuver through narrow city streets.

In 1976, the truck was retired and sold at an auction to a private collector of historic vehicles. An anonymous donor bought the vehicle in October. 

St. Michael’s Fire and Rescue has recently invested in a new fire engine. It will be arriving on campus in spring of 2017. When making a purchase this large you can not go to the local dealership and pick one up. Months of planning, designing, drafting and perfecting the design of the truck. The truck was customized to fit the needs of SMCFR. A group was formed almost year ago to handle this endeavor.

After 16 years of use and over 115,000 miles, Engine 8 will be replaced by a new and custom-designed fire engine. In the fall of 2015, a team of seven students (Frank Webers, Andrew Brown, Dan Rathbone, Kyle Wentzel, Brian Eldridge, Zac Minor, and Colin Ebneth) were tasked with reaching out to dealers and finding the best company for the new fire engine. In addition to reaching out to dealers, the team researched and contacted other fire departments in the area to find the right truck for SMCFR. After narrowing down the options they found that E-ONE, located in Ocala, FL, was the best company to meet their needs. Shortly after they made the decision to go with E-ONE they started a slow and detailed process of customizing every aspect of the truck.

We go “methodically through [plans] so we could lay out the best options for us,” said Erik Haversang ’11, Fire Battalion Chief when asked about how the truck was designed.
St. Michael’s Fire and Rescue is an independent operation from St. Michael’s College. They only bear the name of the college and provide a opportunity for students to serve and help the community.

The Board of Directors for SMCFR approved a budget of $510,000 for the purchase of the truck. This money comes from the revenue generated by the ambulance billing. The purchase of the truck will use all $510,000 of the allocated budget. With the budget approved it was time to find a new fire truck for the department.

"They've outgrown our usefulness for our department," said Chief Robert Stoker with St. George Fire Department. That’s why the city has four apparatuses on order, the first truck is a ladder, used in aerial assaults on fires and the other three trucks are engines, used to pump water from hydrants.

"The last twenty years or so we've taken on a lot of different disciplines, such as hazardous materials response, medical response, traffic accidents," Stoker said. The new vehicles will have 40 percent more space than the older engines in the fleet.

The ladder reaches 125 feet, or about 12 stories. Sharonville has two 13-story buildings, the Ramada Plaza and Clarion Hotel, as well as the 12-story Spectrum Office Tower.

The new truck will replace a 20-year-old fire truck with a bucket and 95-foot reach. The older vehicle is for sale.

The 125-foot fire truck was custom made in Nebraska. With a $1.2 million price tag, the project took 18 months to complete.