Whitfield County Shows Off New Fire Engine

If you saw a shiny red fire truck pulled next to the Whitfield County Administration Building No. 2 on Monday night, don’t worry.

 

The Whitfield County Fire Department was just excited to show off the first engine that had just arrived -  purchased with Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax funds approved by voters last year.

Firefighters brought the truck to let residents and county commissioners take an up-close look, and Commissioner Harold Brooker even climbed into the cab and turned the sirens and lights on.

 

Who could blame Brooker for being so excited about the badly needed fire trucks?

Indeed, Lt. Chris West described the department’s feelings about the new engine as being “like a kid in a candy store.”

 

Three more engines just like this one are expected to be in Whitfield County by the end of the week, and extensive training will start next week, West said.

 

“All the guys are excited,” he said, “and there’s going to be a lot of new training going on over the next couple of weeks. Every driver in the department, no matter if you’re an assistant chief to a basic driver, is going to train on this truck. The public’s going to see them out and about, and what it will be, it’s all these drivers getting familiar with the truck.”

 

All drivers will practice driving through parking lots with cones and will complete a 35-mile road test before they’re certified to drive the engines.

 

Then drivers where the engines will be located (Station 3 in Dawnville, Station 4 in Valley Point, Station 7 in Tunnel Hill, and Station 8 on the South Bypass) will spend even more time training, completing a couple of hundred miles of driving apiece “before they start trucking down the road running emergencies.”

 

If everything goes well, the department expects the engines to be in service by the end of July, West said.

 

Not only are the engines new, though, but all the equipment going on them will be new, an important factor for the department, West pointed out.

 

“This is the first time since they started the department that they’ve ordered every piece of equipment,” West said. “Before, we had to take all the equipment off the old trucks to put on the new trucks, so then whenever the new truck was down, you had to swap all that equipment back to your spare.”

 

Now, however, there will be seven reserve engines fully equipped throughout the county that can be used as reserve and second-out trucks if needed at a fire.

 

Each of the four new engines will cost around $425,000 counting equipment, and West was quick to point out the importance of the SPLOST funds.

 

“That penny right there made the difference,” he said, pointing to a logo prominently displayed on the upper side of the truck. “The SPLOST allowed us to be able to buy the equipment needed for the fire service.”

 

The new trucks are “by far” better engines and “safer for the firemen,” West said. “They’re built from the chassis up to be a fire truck, designed to be a fire truck, designed to carry the weight,” he said, “so it’ll make our firemen safer, just going to make them do their job more efficiently.”

 

West pointed out that every light on the trucks, except for the headlights, is LED, which pull lower voltage so that a big generator isn’t needed to power them when on the scene. The firefighters can also communicate better with each other in the truck thanks to a new wireless headphone system.

West also talked about the built-in snow chains that are raised and lowered with the push of a button.

 

“You activate the switch,” he said, “and the chains drop to the ground and spin under the tires. You don’t have to do anything. Then you hit the switch again, and the chains go back up.”

Two more new big trucks are also on the way, including a 75-foot single-axle ladder truck and a 100-foot aerial dual-axle truck that are expected to be here in September or October.