Puget Sound (WA) Fire recently dedicated a new $1.5 million ladder truck that will be based at Station 74, reports kentreporter.com.

The new apparatus, designed with enhanced safety features, replaces a ladder that went into service in 2007 and is just shy of 95,000 miles; the predecessor will be put into reserve status. Both trucks are Pierce-built.

Officials say ladder trucks usually spend 15 years in front-line service and five years as a reserve.

Puget Sound Fire has an apparatus replacement fund in the capital budget that allows for the planned replacement of rigs, the report notes.

A firefighter in Elkin (NC) was injured after a fire truck overturned three times en route to a call Wednesday morning, reports wfmynews2.com.

The Jot-Um-Down Volunteer Fire Department apparatus, which crashed on Twin Oaks Road in Elkin, was traveling 45 mph as the truck ran off the road, re-entered the roadway, and hit a culvert. It rolled over three times before coming to a stop.

Related: Four Firefighters out of Hospital After Douglas County, OR, Rollover Crash

The firefighter was taken to Wake Forest Baptist Hospital and is in stable condition.

Nick Morgan

Mail Tribune, Medford, Ore.

(MCT)

Aug. 12—Four firefighters working the night shift of a wildfire burning in Douglas County were sent to the hospital after the driver of their crew van reportedly fell asleep at the wheel, causing a rollover crash.

At 9:53 a.m. Wednesday, a crew van part of a convoy of wildland firefighters working the Skyline Ridge Complex left the roadway, struck a guardrail for about 70 feet before driving up a hillside and rolling over in the 15000 block of Tiller Trail Highway near Days Creek, according to a release issued by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.

The four firefighters inside, part of a 20-person crew working the fire riding in three separate vehicles, were rushed by ambulance to Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, according to the sheriff’s office. Two other vehicles containing crew members were not involved in the crash.

Kent Romney, a fire information officer at the fire’s base camp near Myrtle Creek, described the firefighters’ injuries as bumps, bruises and bloody noses. He said the firefighters were taken to the hospital as a precaution.

Neither alcohol nor excessive speed were factors in the single vehicle crash, according to the sheriff’s office, and no citations or arrests were made. The preliminary investigation determined that the 38-year-old driver, identified only as a wildland firefighter from Salem, fell asleep while driving the crew back to camp.

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By Alan M. Petrillo

Onondaga Nation (NY) had an ageing prefab metal building as its main fire station that needed to be replaced, so the Nation turned to Ashley McGraw Architects, which had done renovations on one of its buildings in the past, to develop a feasibility study concerning a new station.

“We had done renovation work on the Nation’s school, and also produced a master plan for expansion,” says Andrew Schuster, principal at Ashley McGraw. “We looked at the growth in the community and the existing facility, which essentially was rotting away, and determined what was missing and needed upgrading to give the Nation a 21st century fire station for its volunteer firefighters. We also considered the community values and determined how we could incorporate the values and philosophies of the use of natural resources into a new station.”

Schuster says the Onondaga Nation chose to include a shared community hall for the Nation community in the new fire station, which was an amenity that was then lacking in the Nation, and to build the station with labor from their own community, on a site that was across the street from the existing station.

The new fire station is named Tsha’thon’swatha’, meaning “where they put it out,” Schuster notes. The aspirations of the Tsha’thon’swatha’ were that it would be built by the people of the Nation, it will walk gently on Mother Earth, it will be a vital part of the community and draw the community closer, it will be a showpiece and destination for others to see and use, and people will learn from the building and the experience of building it, he adds.

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