Mayor Dean Ball said Thursday that Howley, Reidville and Cormack have all been notified of the situation.

The predicament goes deeper when factoring in the department’s response to highway accidents or collisions. When the Deer Lake Fire Rescue department is called to an accident outside its boundary, the pumper truck has to go with the rescue truck to provide support.

Ball said from here on out the only vehicle that will respond to accidents will be the rescue pickup.

“It will be a lesser service,” said Ball, who added the town is doing everything in its power to try to resolve the situation.

The 21-year-old pumper, the backup to a newer model, had actually been on the books for replacement. Ball said the town has been putting money aside for a while to do so.

An issue with the tank separating from the chassis was identified during a regular survey of equipment, and that bumped the pumper truck into first place for replacement. In doing so, it knocked the ladder truck the town had planned to replace first to second.

He has begun restoring a 1929 Boyer fire truck that was purchased from the Boyer Fire Apparatus Company of Logansport in December 1930 by the Union Township Fire Department to give service to Jackson, Jefferson, Liberty and Union Townships, according to the Logansport Pharos-Tribune. 

The Boone Motor Company provided a day driver to the truck, and Barney Ireland was assigned as the night driver. 

Investigators say she drove passed flares that were put on the roadway to alert drivers to the accident scene.

The woman suffered minor injuries and no firefighters were hurt. It was unclear whether she would face charges.

"If we know that we use 50 pieces of this equipment in a week, when we reach a certain threshold, we need to order more," Dixon said. "That way we don't have a lot of overstock."

By using the software, the department hopes to cut losses from disposable supplies and medications that have expiration dates.

Paul Davis, director of the Ambulance Service, said the department has seen an increase in the cost of medications and disposable supplies, such as nasal cannulas, IV solution and oxygen equipment, in recent years. The department budgeted $110,000 for equipment, which is up from about $72,000 in 2013.

"Our medications are ever increasing triple-digit percentages," Davis said.

There are medications the ambulances must carry, but aren't used often.

"Cardiac drugs, we use those daily," Davis said. "Some more specialized drugs we may only use every couple of months."

Dixon has researched the software since 2012, and the department has made site visits to other agencies that use the program. He said many see supply costs reduced by 10 to 20 percent. Locally, the Marion County Ambulance Service uses OperativeIQ.

The paper checklist crews use while checking their ambulances will be moved to an electronic version.

"That's how paramedics and EMTs will request the supplies they need for their truck, so that inventory levels across the fleet our equal and adequate," Dixon said. "On the backside of the software, it will maintain the inventory levels in the supply room, so if the reorder point is 25 for nasal cannulas, then it will make a notification to reorder."

The software also monitors vehicles and provides notifications when maintenance is required.