The city of Portland (ME) announced October 14 that its fire department had added two new engines and one new ladder truck.

All three new fire trucks are 2022 Pierce Enforcers with a 15-to-20 year life expectancy. The engines cost $710,000 each. The ladder truck cost $1.2 million.

“These three new fire trucks are so important to our ability to respond to the volume of calls we receive,” said Chief Keith Gautreau in a press release. “This year we’re on track to answer 18,000 calls for service, which is a 20 percent increase from the previous calendar year.”

A new multimillion-dollar fire station in Seymour (IN) is expected to cut down substantially on response times, WDRB.com reported. 

Seymour Fire Chief Brad Lucas told WDRB that Fire Station 2’s new location at 1019 West Second Street will make all the difference.

Lucas is preparing to show off the city’s new $5.75 million fire station which broke ground nearly one year ago but has been needed for more than a decade, the report said.

The nearly 17,000-square-foot building has several conference rooms as well as rooms where firefighters can relax in between calls, according to the report.

The former station, which is less than a fourth of the size of the new station, is less than a mile away and will be repurposed by the city, the report said. 

On November 1, community and state leaders unveiled a valuable asset to the Hanceville Fire Department: a new truck to be used for medical response in Cullman County’s growing municipality, CullmanTribune.com reported.

The truck, equipped with an automatic chest compression machine and other critical medical equipment, was provided thanks to funds from the Tyson Foods settlement, the report said. 

The Tyson Foods facility in Hanceville in 2019 discharged illegal wastewater into the Black Warrior River resulting in its damaged ecosystem and fish kills numbering approximately 175,000, the report said. A lawsuit on behalf of the State of Alabama was filed against Tyson for violation of the Alabama Water Pollution Control Act and the Environmental Management Act. 

After the $3 million settlement for one of the largest fish kills in the state, the Restitution Fund Oversight Committee was formed, which is tasked with project selection and oversight for the settlement. Criteria for funds include projects which provide recreational opportunities, highlight the state’s natural resources and benefit the impacted areas’ public and environment health.

When a fire broke out on Susan Drive in Saugus (MA) last week, the first due companies for the area were on the west side of town, responding to another alarm at the end of Forrest Street. That, according to the Saugus Firefighters’ Union, left companies “behind the eight ball” as they raced to the scene, ItemLive.com reported.

While no one was wounded in the blaze, the union took to Facebook to once again call for the town to construct a third fire station in west Saugus, which they say would alleviate issues like the ones faced in the response to the Susan Drive fire.