On August 16th, the inferno ate up land at a rapid rate. The firefighters manning the vehicle were out doing structure protection when the blaze began to burn out-of-control. Grant County Fire District 3 Chief Don Fortier says the two firefighters told him they couldn’t get the truck into gear forcing them to leave it behind. Investigators were unable to confirm this because the truck had been burned severely.  

Gross negligence was ruled out as a factor in the mishaps.

However, fire officials did say that the truck was parked in an “undesirable location,” meaning that it shouldn’t have been situated where it was because it wasn’t a wildland truck.

The Board of Selectmen authorized the purchase of the truck for $609,257 back in early 2017. The department had been planning for the purchase of the new truck for years as its current, 25 year-old pumper truck at was reaching the end of its useful life.  

Fire trucks are custom built and specifications for each truck can be up to 150 pages long, according to immediate past NOMAD chief Donnie MacMillan, who also chaired the committee that designed the truck. MacMillan said a key feature of the new Ten-55 is a pre-connected hard suction hose, designed to simplify the process of getting water into the pumper, and then to the fire. This truck can pull from the department’s underground water tanks or any other body of water at a rate of 2,000 gallons a minute.

She responded to a fundraising letter from the fire company and donated $10.  

"I put a letter in my own words and I gave them money of my own and I put it in an envelope and I said to my mom, 'Can you send this to the Pikesville fire department?'" Lailah said.

Little did she know how the fire company would respond.