By Alan M. Petrillo

Dawson County (GA) Fire and Emergency Services needed better fire and emergency medical services (EMS) coverage on the west side of the county, so it came up with $1.56 million to design and build what would become the county’s eighth fire/EMS station.

“That part of the county is a pretty mountainous area and we had pretty extensive response times out there,” says Danny Thompson, Dawson County’s chief. “We needed to reduce our response times for fire and medical calls and the way to do that was to add a new station out in that area.” Dawson notes that the $1.56 million allocated had to cover site improvements as well as the work done through a design-build contract.

Dawson County is a mostly rural county with a population of 27,000, located an hour north of Atlanta. “We have a lot of urban/rural interface with some mountainous territory,” Thompson points out, “and cover 214 square miles.” He adds that the new station houses an engine with a 1,000-gallon water tank, a 3,000-gallon water tender (tanker), and an Advanced Life Support (ALS) ambulance.

“This is the first station we’ve built in 11 years, and a lot of things have changed in the fire and EMS service in that time,” Thompson observes. “We wanted to be sure that the new station had a number of safety features in terms of removing contaminants from the apparatus bay

The Columbus City Council recently approved a $1.5 million contract for the remodeling of and additions to the Charlie Louis (NE) Fire Station, located at 424 8th St., reports ColumbusTelegram.com.

The funds will come out of the 2022 fiscal year’s sales tax with a small portion from this year’s, if necessary, the report says. The cost breakdown would include more than $1.3 million for the renovations itself while site work would cost $192,000.

A presentation by WSKF Architects, which has been contracted for the work, Principal Owner Rick Kuhl showed what was going to be added to the station, as well as current features of the building that need to be retouched: more parking, storage space, and servicing equipment, safety and health improvements, exhaust filtration, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, a fitness area, and dormitories.

All in all, the new digs will have 3,500 additional square feet, including an office for the Columbus Police Department.

The Calera (OK) Fire Department is working to bring home “The Spirit of Oklahoma,” an up-for-sale fire truck sent to New York City to help with 9/11 recovery, reports newson6.com.

The bond between New York and Oklahoma began 26 years ago when 10 New York firefighters came to the rescue following the Oklahoma City Bombing; those same 10 men lost their lives in the September 11 attacks.

Following the latter attack, students at a Fort Gibson school raised nearly half a million dollars to buy a new truck, which was named the “Spirit of Oklahoma” and sent to New York City to aid. However, it was recently sold at auction.

Officials now want to buy the truck from its current owner in Massachusetts. He gave the department two weeks to raise the $25,000 to buy and transport the truck to Oklahoma. As of this posting, the Calera Fire Department is up to $2,303 on its GoFundMe page, which has a deadline of June 15.

By Alan M. Petrillo

North America’s first electric fire engine, manufactured by Pierce Manufacturing Inc., has been in service at Madison (WI) Fire Department’s Station 8 for nearly three weeks and has responded to 200 calls with what the fire chief calls “flawless performance.”

Madison Fire chief Steven Davis dubbed the Pierce Volterra pumper “the coolest fire truck in the world.” He says the electric pumper, “Drives one hundred percent like a traditional pumper. It has a lot of electric torque and our drivers love how it handles and how quiet it is in the cab.”

Dave Archer, Pierce’s vice president of engineering, says the Pierce Volterra pumper is built on a Pierce Enforcer™ custom chassis and cab with seating for six firefighters. The rig is powered by a 155-kW hour battery pack, specially designed to meet Madison Station 8’s daily duty cycle, and housed in an 18-inch-wide compartment at the rear of the crew cab.

The pumper has a Cummins ISB 6.7-liter 350-horsepower (hp) diesel engine to power its 1,500-gallon per minute (gpm) pump, and to serve as a backup if the battery pack becomes depleted. Gross vehicle weight rating on the pumper is 42,000 pounds, the rig has a 500-gallon water tank, a Command Zone™ display on the pump panel and on the dash, and 150 cubic feet of compartmentation, plus ladder storage space.

Jim Johnson, Oshkosh Corp. executive vice president and president of Fire & Emergency, points out that the Madison electric pumper uses an Oshkosh patented parallel-electric drive train featuring an electro-mechanical infinitely variable transmission. “This allows zero emissions operation when powered by the integrated onboard batteries,” Johnson says, “and can be coupled to the Cummins diesel engine to provide continuous and uninterrupted power to the pumping system or the drive system.”

Davis notes Madison had Pierce configure the pumper’s operation “to run the pump off the diesel engine in order to simplify operation for our firefighters so they don’t have to worry about draining the battery. When the operator puts the vehicle in pump gear, the diesel automatically powers up. It also will automatically power up if the battery becomes depleted, with the switch over happening seamlessly.”

Davis says the pumper carries 500 feet of 5-inch LDH (large diameter hose), and has two 300-foot 2-1/2-inch cross lays, and one 300-foot 1-3/4-inch cross lay. “We have not had the electric pumper at a working structure fire yet, but it has extinguished some motor vehicle fires,” he points out. “On the 200 calls that we’ve responded to with this engi