Mission Township Fire Department welcomes new fire trucks

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - Fire crews at the Mission Township Fire Department say they’ll be able to serve the community much better now that they’ve got some new equipment.

One of the vehicles is a $700,000 Pumper Engine Tanker 40 truck picked up from South Dakota.

“This truck has a lot of water on it and it’s gonna be used in place of what we called our rescue truck. Before we were taking a rescue truck out on fire calls which its main purpose, it had supplies for a fire but it’s mainly for rescues and car wrecks, and crash fires and things like that,” says Mission Township Fire Department, Fire Chief, Forrest Walter.

“One OF the things a lot of times that we have to take with us is our water, so this tank has 3,000 gallons which our other pumper which we could take on fires only had 1,800 gallons, so this is bigger, better, faster truck,” says Chief Walter.

The other a $200,000 brush truck from Salina.

“And then we were fortunate enough to get approval over the last year to get a brush truck to replace one of our 18 brush trucks that was over 20 years old. So it gives us really good arsenal to work with on response for everything from grass fires, medical, to having a better engine out for second out on our structure fires,” says Chief Walter.

Crews say it takes about 500 days to get a new fire truck, so they consider themselves very lucky.

“We are excited to get a new fire truck actually to get two in a week is astonishing,” says Chief Walter.

Crews say the new trucks will help them better serve the community.

“That’s a problem a lot of rural fire departments have is that they got to be prepared for anything so you got to find that finetune to be able to meet the demand of what the public needs in emergencies from a fall, to a structure fire to a full hazmat situation. So we’re able to utilize our assets more effectively and efficiently and have a better response with the equipment that’s necessary for the different types of calls,” says Chief Walter.

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