"We will be adding a pump and bed to the chassis," said Muenster Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mitch Creed. "This truck is bigger than our older unit and will allow our department to better serve the community because the four-wheel-drive will allow us to get to wildland fires easier."

Muenster Volunteer Fire Department has put the new truck into service and is now turning their sights to building a new fire station.

"We are looking into building a new station and when we do that, we will be able to accept more volunteers," Creed said.

At an open house April 7, neighbors came to check out the utilitarian living quarters, and a few brave ones took some fire extinguishers to put out a fire, albeit a controlled one.

The decision to house a firefighter and add staff at the station was made partly in response to analyzing calls and fires in the area, said Bruce Evans, chief of Upper Pine.

Last year, staff responded to 78 calls from the station, and they tended to be medical calls for folks who were really sick. About 70 percent of the calls ended with an ambulance transport to the hospital, which is 25 percent higher than the district average.

"We have an 18-wheel truck that we use as our water supply but it is hard to get off the road to wildland fires," explained Chief Paul Jenkins of the City of Dumas VFD. "Since this truck is a lot smaller, it will be used to shuttle water to the attack vehicles for grass and wildland fires."

The truck has four-wheel drive, power steering and an automatic transmission. It is expected to bring better safety and efficiency to the department as a multi-purpose unit.

"It has a 2500-gallon tank making it a useful water source for wildland fires and structure fires," said Chief Jenkins.

Launched in Texas in 2005, the U.S. Forest Service and Texas A&M Forest Service administer the no-cost program that transfers the military property.

That came on Thursday when Eldora Fire Chief David Lloyd and four others from the fire department traveled to Snyder, Nebraska to pick up the department's new truck.

It was about a year ago, at the March 2015 Eldora City Council meeting, that the purchase for the fire truck, a 2016 Smeal Fire Apparatus truck, was approved. The truck carries 1250 gallons of water and has a 1,000 gallons per minute pump.