Deputy Chief Dan McCoy says the new 2019 truck has already been deployed once. (Danielle McCreadie)
The Kennebecasis Valley Fire Department has put a brand new fire engine into service.
The 2019 Spartan, built by Dependable Fire Trucks in Ontario, will replace their current engine from 1979.
Deputy Fire Chief Dan McCoy says the new fire truck comes with much needed technology upgrades.
“Today’s trucks are custom cabs, and so these will actually sit six people internally in the cab. There’s a lot of technology differences, compartments are a little bit different, just more modern obviously than what the old one was,” he said.
We are pleased to announce that this past weekend our new Engine 2 was put into service. This truck, a 2019 Spartan built by Dependable Fire Trucks, replaces the old Engine 2 which after a decade of service on the "front line" will move into a back-up role as an engine. pic.twitter.com/5ASlIDKEgf
— KVFire (@KVFire) December 2, 2019
McCoy says new trucks aren’t cheap, but the old one was far past its replacement.
‘The truck was in the vicinity of $630,000. Having a new truck replacing an old truck like that is always great. It brings new technology, whether from the fire suppression side of things and operations, or just from the truck itself. It will last us a long time,” he said.
McCoy says the fire fighters are excited to have something new at the station.
“We don’t get these pieces of equipment coming along very often, so the morale is definitely high. The guys are very excited to have a new truck, they’ve put it through its paces, they’ve done all the training on it. It’s a great working truck, its comfortable. It’s very quiet compared to some of the other trucks we have, so they’re very happy with that,” he said.
He says the crew has already put the trucks to good use, and even had to deploy it last weekend.
McCoy says they’re unsure what will happen with the old truck, but they don’t have room to store it right now.
“It’s up to our board of directors whats going to happen with that. Is it surplus? We don’t have space for it, but I’m not sure exactly what their intent with that is.”
