An April 2014 report from the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency identified that EMS providers weren't using safety restraints in 80% of investigated ambulance crashes.1,2

This single astounding fact was the stimulus for the Cranberry Township (Pa.) EMS (CTEMS) to develop what we wanted to be the safest ambulance in America—one that would focus on provider safety by addressing crash avoidance, and crash survivability.

We knew that our focus on crash avoidance could only be accomplished by changing many of the norms of ambulance design in the United States.

As for crash survivability, there had already been a few industry leade

And as Fire Chief Scott Jepson stood beside the 2016 Pierce Saber front-line engine, he thought back to 1992 and his first year as a firefighter.

“Engine 5 was one of the trucks here when Somerset engines started to go on medical calls with the ambulance. That’s why I wanted to have Engine 5 back again.

“It’s a little bit of tradition, a little bit of nostalgia,” Jepson, in his ninth year as chief, said this week about installing the engine numeral again.

The cab of the $440,000 truck, built in Florida, has compartments inside and out designed to make medical and other equipment accessible without entering it, Jepson said.

The department that responds to approximately 3,000 rescue calls a year with its two ambulances and engine support, and Jepson moved around Engine 5 to show pull-out compartments that will hold equipment from medical bags to Jaws of Life cutting tools.

Interior compartments are also accessible from outside, leaving space for firefighters’ gear and lessening their need to leave it on the floor of the cab, Jepson said.

Veteran firefighter Ron Audette, who began his career in Fall River, put on a Blue Tooth headset, and said, “I’m on a scene and I come out of the truck. I can maintain communication.”

On the 2003 Engine 6 it will replace or 1995 Engine 3, being shifted to a reserve status, they used wired headsets to communicate between dispatchers, supervisors and each other. When they hit the fire scene, the headsets and connection stayed behind.

According to Mark McGrath, president of Fire Company #5, the project began when a private collector had purchased the truck and planned on restoring it himself but then he changed his mind. He had researched that Packanack Fire Company was the original owners and he called them to find out if the company wanted the truck back.

"We never expected to be restoring an antique fire truck but we could not pass up the opportunity to reclaim our first new fire truck," said McGrath.

Back in 1951 Packanack Lake Volunteer Fire Company had been in existence for nine years and was operating with two donated hand-me-down fire trucks. Funds were raised for the purchase a new apparatus, a 1951 Mack Model 75-A pumper. It served Company #5 from 1951 to 1966, at which time it was replaced with a larger pumper truck.

The 1951 Mack was sold to the General Electric Fire Brigade, in Lynn, Mass., and made its way to a saw mill in Vermont, another volunteer fire company, and finally at a farm having never been placed in service again, explained McGrath.

In April 2007 the owner of the Mack, needing space in his barn, tracked down the Packanack Lake Volunteer Fire Company #5 and called to ask if they wanted the truck back.

"We feel the 1951 Mack represents Company #5's commitment to tradition,