New fire truck for Neepawa

Details

Published on Tuesday, January 10, 2017

By Eoin Devereux

The Neepawa Press/Neepawa Banner

The Neepawa Fire Department has added a new vehicle to its fleet. The 2016 International pumper truck, which was ordered from Fort Garry Fire Trucks of Winnipeg, arrived just before the end of the year.

The price tag for the new truck was $399,895 before taxes, though a purchase of this type for a municipality is tax exempt, so the town will receive the cost of the taxes back at a later date. The Neepawa Fire Department now has five vehicles in service (four full size fire trucks of various capacity and a one tonne truck). Fire chief Scott Gibson said that this is now the largest truck at their disposal.

“It’s a lot larger truck. This one has 1,200 gallons of water on it, so it’s a big capacity. A bigger pump than our past two trucks,” said Gibson. “It’s 32 feet long. The dump shoot on the back sticks out another foot. We got it to fit in the existing hall, but it’s a tight fit. When we started the purchasing process, we debated whether to order one for the existing facility or plan ahead for the new fire hall. It was decided that it was in the best interests of the community to plan for the future and we’d make it work here.”

Gibson noted that since the truck arrived back in December, he and the other members of the fire department have been very busy getting all the equipment on board and all training completed so the truck can go into service as quickly as possible.

“Once [the truck] arrived, it took a few weeks to get all our equipment shuffled in and get everyone trained on it. There are still a couple people who have to go through the training. Scheduling just hasn’t worked out in those cases, but for the most part, we’ve all had a chance to go through the truck. The response from everyone has been positive. They like the layout of the equipment. It’s more open, in terms of space and windows. The older trucks are more enclosed. There’s still some fine-tuning to do, but overall, everyone is very happy with we have to work with here.”