With an average 150 runs a month and more than 140,000 miles of firefighting on the previous 10-year-old ladder truck, a new one was needed to handle a Southside district full of apartments, hotels, homes and businesses along the Baymeadows Road corridor, Station 44 Capt. James Kountz said. So he revived a tradition of baptizing a new fire truck that dates back to the 1800s when firefighters used horse-drawn steam pumpers.

Jacksonville’s fire department has 58 stations with 51 engines, 12 ladder trucks and 41 rescue units, according to spokesman Tom Francis. The city’s fleet management division considers a fire truck’s age, mileage and cost to repair before a decision is made to replace it. That’s about 10 years of use for an engine, 15 for a ladder truck and five for a rescue unit. Many things can alter that life span.

A vote will take place on March 1 to decide whether a $2.7 million bond should be issued to pay for a portion of an estimated $3.5 million dollar expansion on the current fire station. 

Firefighters have less than 60 seconds to put all their gear on before going out on a call, and with the limited space between the gear and the truck, Bruxvoort says it's making that task difficult, and is creating safety hazards. 

"Where our bunker gear is placed right now it's a close proximity to moving trucks, and then when the trucks are running, the diesel smoke is blowing on the gear," says Bruxvoort. 

Bruxvoort says the issue stems from the growing city.

He says the current building was built in the early 1970's, and since then the population has increased from 3,500 people to 6,000 people.

Making the number of calls coming in and the number of volunteer members increase as well. 

"So along with the volume of everything else growing and city growing, then the fire department needs to keep up and we need to have more space too," says Bruxvoort. 

The new fire station is at 411 Arkansas 229, which is on the north end of town.

"Volume is up in this part of town," Haskell Fire Chief Brian Cotten said. "We needed a station on this side of town, especially with the development of the Silver Springs subdivision." Cotten said the department has 18 members and nine emergency medical technicians. The department now operates with part-time, paid employees.

he main fire station, Central Station, is in the middle of town at 121 Cardinal Lane behind the Haskell City Hall. In 2005, the city received $95,000 in general-improvement funds from the Arkansas Legislature to remodel the main station.

The second station, referred to as Station 3, is on Grand Avenue, which is on the other side of the railroad tracks on the east end of town. Cotten said this assures uninterrupted fire protection when there are trains on the tracks.

Construction on this second fire station was started in 2005 and completed in 2006. The city received a $50,000 block grant from the Arkansas Development of Rural Services to build the second station.

The third station, referred to as Station 2, is the newest facility.

Cotten said the city took bids on the new fire station with the lowest bid of $476,000 coming from eco Construction of Little Rock, which completed the project in November 2015.

Construction on the new fire station started in August 2015, and the department moved into the new facility on Nov. 30. It is a 2,500-square-foot meta