Firefighters whose west Little Rock station was damaged following Friday’s tornado are operating out of a different location as cleanup efforts continued Monday, arkansasonline.com reported. 

A Little Rock Fire Department official said the move was temporary, but that it was too soon to tell when the firefighters would be able to return to work at their station, the report said.

Fire Station No. 9, 1324 North Shackleford Road, was heavily damaged when the tornado swept through Central Arkansas, cutting a six-and-a-half mile trail of destruction in the city before continuing north through North Little Rock, Sherwood and Jacksonville, according to the report.

A fire official said the station firefighters had been preparing their apparatus and tools Friday when the tornado struck, the report said. 

After the tornado passed, they examined the station for damage and shut off the water and gas, according to the report. A 40-foot beam had traveled roughly 60 yards from a neighboring church and struck “halfway through the station,” the report said. 

One of the facility’s engine bay doors flew about 80 yards to the west, damaging another building, the report said.

Despite the damage to the facility, its vehicles — two engines, a ladder truck, an SUV and the battalion chief’s pickup — are operational, the report said.

Caroline Kubzansky
Chicago Tribune
(TNS)

A 1941 fire engine has returned to Niles after a long sojourn in Wisconsin, village officials announced March 28.

The vehicle, which Fire Chief Marty Feld told village trustees was the second fire engine ever used in Niles, had been in Birchwood (WI) as part of a private collection.

The collection owner contacted the village and asked if officials would be interested in purchasing it, spokesperson Mitch Johnson told Pioneer Press.

“Fire Department staff spent time determining if it was ours, eventually finding a Village document with the original vehicle’s [identification] number,” Johnson wrote in an email to Pioneer Press. “We compared it to the vehicle for sale and it matched.”

The village paid $5,000 for the engine and another $500 in fuel costs to Lin-Mar Towing to bring the engine back to Niles, Johnson said.

The vehicle is in “excellent” condition, Johnson said, and will be part of future parades and special events in the village.

According to information posted on the village website, the first “fire wagon” in the village was a hand-drawn apparatus known as “Blue Boy.” It now resides at Fire Station #2 at the intersection of Dempster Street and Cumberland Avenue, the website states.

Information in the village’s 1999 Centennial History book states that the fire department partially retired Blue Boy to part-time service in 1910 following the purchase of a horse-drawn pumper.

Around the time that the 1941 Pirsch would have been in use in Niles, the Niles Fire Department was raising money for an ambulance, eventually purchased for $6,000.

Niles established a full-time fire department in 1953, according to the centennial history. It had hired its first full-time firefighters in 1947, establishing their salaries at $225/month in 1948 for a combination of firefighting and custodial work.

Neighboring Park Ridge also has its own vintage fire engine from 1934. Also a Pirsch, the truck returned to the city in 2020 following decades with the Memphis, Tenn. fire department. To return it here, the Park Ridge Historical Society purchased it for $20,000. That truck was taken out of service in 1955, according to prior reporting.

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.