The city of Opelika just added a new fire engine to its fleet. The new truck, which cost $1.2 million, is called an aerial. It’s the first of four new firetrucks that will arrive this year. The total price for all four firetrucks will be close to $3 million.
Opelika Fire Chief Shane Boyd said the new aerial is a multi-purpose truck with a pump, a water tank, a water hose, an aerial device, and ground ladders. Boyd said the truck was customized to the Opelika Fire Department’s specifications.
“We’d never done this before, but we put together a committee of our own officers and firefighters that wanted to be part of building the truck and said let’s try to maximize the uses,” Boyd said. “Firemen are notoriously hard to please. We second guess everything we do. We’re probably our own worst critics, but they’ve been really happy with the way they laid it out. I don’t think we would change anything if we ordered another one.”
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Boyd called the new aerial a “tremendous investment in the infrastructure of the city.”
“It’s just going to maximize our efficiency,” he said. “We can put more people on the scene more routinely because we can run this truck a lot more than we could run a 25-year-old truck. Just about every time we moved it, something broke.”
This new fire engine has been on order for two years now. The other three trucks on order are all pumpers and are expected to arrive around September. According to Boyd, each of the new trucks will replace vehicles that are between 20 and 25 years old.
“One of the things we’ve been doing in the last couple of years since I’ve been here is taking a real good look at everything that we have,” Boyd said. “The mayor and the city administrator (Joey) Motley … they have been instrumental in getting the new trucks here.”
The custom aspects of the new truck has the gotten Opelika Fire Department national attention as well. The new truck was featured on The Rig, an industry website dedicated to covering firefighting. Other fire departments from around the country have also expressed interest in the new apparatus.
“There’s a lot of custom aspects to this truck,” Boyd said. “So it attracted some natural attention.
“We’ve had people from all over, fire departments calling wanting to come look at the compartmentalization and all that stuff.”
Boyd, however, is quick to give credit for the attention where it’s due.
“I give all the credit to the committee,” he said. “I emphasize that when you’re specking some of these things out, you need to let the guys that actually do the work weigh in on the purchase. And they really made some innovative decisions.”
Some of those decisions include $60,000 worth of jaws of life equipment attached to a Lazy Susan that slides out of the side of the truck; sliding panels for the hand tools; battery powered tools instead of tools powered by hydrocarbon engines; LED lights throughout the truck’s compartments; and integrated wireless headsets.
The older truck will still be used as well. Boyd expects to keep it as a reserve at Fire Station No. 4 by Opelika High School.
In addition to the new truck, the city is also making plans to open a new fire station off of Gateway Drive. The new station is expected to open later next winter and will cost around $5 million to build.
“The target is late November, early December,” Boyd said. “It was a comprehensive decision, but that area has probably needed one for years and having it now will be a tremendous addition to the city.”
According to Boyd, the new fire station will increase the city’s fire truck fleet by 20%, improve response times, and allow for quicker access to Tiger Town and the interstate.
