Hoffman says the location of this new facility makes it easier for crews to respond to key areas of the city.

"You can go so many different directions from here. It's easy in easy out. You can get downtown and get to the industrial park and much more with ease from here," he said.

Mayor Hoffman says the fire station should be open by this spring.

Wilson said getting the truck means the students can have access to a vital piece of training equipment.

“We teach our students how to pump, how to use hose lines, basically, how to fight fires, and without a pumper we can’t give them that knowledge. A pumper to us is really important to our program and our kids,” he said.

The program currently has an older pumper donated to the program by the Town of Midland’s fire department. That pumper will still be used by the program, Wilson said.

“A new truck is something that we can rely on for several years to come to teach these kids the techniques of firefighting,” he said.

The firefighting course at Georgian is a three-semester program that currently has 50 students and covers ice water rescue, auto extrication, handling hazardous material, as well as live fire fighting.

“A lot of our students are getting on volunteer fire services, which is great because we need volunteer firefighters, and it gives (the students) the training to keep up with the standards for when they apply to full-time services,” Wilson said.

The pumper donated by Wasaga Beach is 27 years old. It was replaced with a new vehicle two years ago.

“You can do a number of things with a retired pumper: you can sell it, trade it in when purchase a new one, get scrap value depending on how rough a shape it’s in, or donate it,” said Wasaga Beach fire chief Mike McWilliam. “We looked at what we could get on a trade-in, and the company really didn’t want it as a trade-in.”

They got called off the car accident - if they had not been, the sparks from the unattached cables could have started a fire.

"We saw the cables and tools laying on the ground and it hit us that somebody had broken into it," chief Bernie Paul said.

They replaced the battery within an hour. After replacing it with a new one, firefighters and Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office deputies found the battery outside the fire department.

"It's a very, very large battery," Paul said. "It won't fit in a pickup truck or a car, you know, it's for a large piece of equipment. so I'm not really sure. Other than that, maybe to sell it? I don't know."

The locksmith who came to fix the door that was broken suggested the thieves stole the battery in order to charge electronics at home.

The thieves also took a handheld radio from the station.

"We keep very tight control of our radios because it is a frequency that all the departments - 30 departments in Siskiyou County - we all use those frequencies, so we don't want