Howard T. Smith is a second generation firefighter having grown up in West Wareham and spent much of his young life around the West Wareham Fire Station where his dad was captain. He joined the fire department as soon as he was old enough. Choosing firefighting as a career he attended college to get his degree in fire science. He has been a firefighter for a number of departments and is currently with the Cambridge Fire Dept. He also teaches at the Mass. Fire Academy. Having grown up in this area, he became very familiar with Maxim Motor Company of Middleborough and spent much of his time fighting fires with Maxim fire trucks. He has written two books on Maxim fire apparatus.

Inside Charlottesville Fire Station One, Captain Jeremy Evans and his crew have become experts at squeezing through tight spaces and precisely parking a fire engine in a bay built in 1961 for smaller trucks.

“With the modern fire apparatus we have in the building and the size, it is a bit of a challenge,” Evans said.

It's a similar scene at the Ridge Street Fire Station, which was built in 1959.

“You add the length and everything else, everything is starting to get tight in the closed areas,” said Scott Parkinson, Charlottesville firefighter.

Maintenance costs are also adding up, so the city is bringing in a consultant to study its fire facilities.

“We want to make sure that we initially determine by this study, are they in the right location?  And, if so, do they need to be rehabilitated or do they need to be rebuilt entirely?” said Charlottesville Fire Department Chief Andrew Baxter.

Baxter says the study will also look at the changing role firefighters play in protecting Charlottesville. These roles include responding to medical calls, hazardous material spills, and technical rescues.

Authored by executive director Steve Poftak, the report tracks “how the City’s efforts have improved firefighting, business permitting, and the flow of traffic,” the institute said in a statement.

On the firefighting front, electronic data from the city’s Inspectional Services Division on building hazards, combined with the Fire Department’s own hazard reports, was recently made available to dispatchers, said Fire Commissioner Joseph Finn.

Poftak wrote in the report that the data project stemmed “from an internal request by the BFD’s own dispatch unit to better understand building hazards. The intent with this program is to take the existing property-specific sources of data in the city and put it into the hands of Dispatch and fire fighters -- so that they can know what known hazards exist in and around a building before entering.”

Eventually, Finn said, the electronic data will be available on fire trucks and on hand-held devices for fire officials who take command at scenes.

Fire Chief Jared Bean said the new tanker replaces a 1984 Ford model that had a 1,200-gallon capacity.

"We're able to get more water (to a fire) quicker," Bean said. "One of our biggest struggles on a structure fire for a rural fire department is water supply."

The department last purchased a new truck in 2007.

Bean said that although there were few problems with the older tanker, it had become one of the oldest trucks in the department's fleet.

WSFR said that through improvements and innovative partnerships over the past six years, it has seen its ISO rating drop from a rating of 4 for most of the insured properties in the fire district to a rating of 2. This rating places WSFR within the top 2 percent of fire agencies nationwide of the 48,754 fire agencies rated by ISO last year. Only 1,060 agencies achieved a rating of 2, WSFR said.

Structures that are more than five miles from a fire station and have water available by fire hydrant received a rating of 3. Structures that are further than five miles from a fire station and are not served by a fire hydrant received a rating of 10. WSFR significantly increased its proficiency in serving the areas with a rating of a 10 by boosting its ability to establish a water tender shuttle operation from 350 gallons per minute to 500 gallons per minute.

“I am proud of the transformation of this organization over the past six years," WSFR Fire Chief Herb Brady said. "We have brought together a diverse group of highly trained career and volunteer professionals who embrace our values of readiness, excellence, courage and respect on a daily basis. We could not accomplish a world-class level of performance without a supportive and engaged board and positive partnerships with the Towns of Windsor and Severance, our four water districts and Weld County Communications.”