The new pumper is now designated Engine 1.

According to Assistant Fire Chief Alex Countryman, the new features of the apparatus include hydraulic ladder accessibility, a 1,500 gallon per minute pump capacity, 970 gallons of water on-board storage and 30 gallons of Class A foam concentrate, a better lighting package for night work and a bigger motor for negotiating the steep hills in the department’s service area.

“The addition of this new apparatus to our fleet will allow us to respond to emergencies more efficiently and safely than we have been able to in the past, with the older, outdated equipment,” Countryman said in a news release.

The trucks were funded through the 2017 fiscal year operating and are in addition to the introduction of new engines in January, according to city officials.

Response times are a major issue in a report that Chief Michael Wilkinson presented to the Merced City Council on Monday. Wilkinson said the ideal travel time to get to an emergency is four minutes, but said that staffing shortages at dispatch and lack of resources in parts of the city are delaying fire crews. "We're probably looking at six, eight, maybe even 10 minutes before the first engine arrives," Wilkinson said.

As the weather conditions made it particularly dangerous for residents in the area, several evacuations occurred. Amazingly, only a few new fires started in spite of the conditions.  

The Dewey County Sheriff says that about 50 area homes have burned in the Rhea Fire so far. Fortunately, he says that they are lifting all of the evacuation orders so people can go back and check on their homes.

One volunteer fire department lost a fire truck due to the wildfires.