Fire Department unveils new heavy rescue truck

There was an extra vehicle at the Perryville Board of Alderman meeting on Tuesday, as the Perryville Fire Department showcased its newest addition. The Fire Department will soon be adding a heavy rescue truck to its fleet.
“This is the newest piece of fire apparatus we’ve gotten since 2006, when we bought a pumper truck,” Perryville Assistant Fire Chief Bill Jones said. At that time, we had an engine that was worn out and failed to pass the annual pump test so we removed the pump, built cabinets where the pump had been we made it into a second rescue truck to carry equipment that had to be removed from our primary rescue truck due to weight and lack of physical room on the rescue truck.” This truck lasted several years but due to mechanical issues has been taken out of service. This newer model will be even better than that.
“This new truck will carry more things than what our light rescue truck did,” Jones said. “The light rescue truck was more for extradition at auto accidents, this will carry all the same equipment our light rescue did, but will also carry additional equipment that we had to take off of our light truck because it was overloaded. With the new advances in auto technology and construction we’ve had to get more tools, and this gives us the ability to put it all on one truck.”
The truck is fitted with its rescue tools in the front bumper, such as the jaws of life and hose reels that are able to be pulled back in electronically with the push of a button. Currently the reels are manual wind type reels that have over 20 years of service on them and they can be contrary at times. The truck also has three large trays for tools that can be accessed on either side of the truck., along with a flood light on the roof of the tuck that Jones said will “make a pitch black night look like day.”
One of the most important part in Jones’ eyes, is that for insurance reasons, the truck has also been outfitted for fire rescues as well.

“ISO which rates us for insurance, does not give us points for rescue trucks, ISO is not concerned about that whatsoever,” Jones said. “Their only concern is structure fires, so what we have done since it is much larger, we were able to add some equipment to not only make it a heavy rescue truck for vehicle accidents, but also a heavy rescue service vehicle many different type of emergency calls.”
Some of those tools include, forcible entry tools, working various structure fire type hand tools, ladders, and a full cascade system which allows the department to fill air bottles at the scene, and carries six additional self contained breathing apparatus for when they must enter smokey areas. The older rescue truck won’t go to waste however, it will be re-purposed and serve as the water rescue truck and technical rescue truck and have a large amount of rope rescue equipment. Jones is very happy with the new addition and believes that it will serve the community well for many years.
“This was very much needed,” Jones said. “We had simply outgrown our primary rescue truck and we want to continue to serve Perryville in an effective way.”
The truck has not yet been used in the field as it still must be outfitted with radios and the tools necessary for the various jobs.
“The way this truck is set up it makes it very easy to access those tools and should make us quicker in our ability to work when we are on the scene of a motor vehicle accident or a structure fire or any other incident we are detailed to,” Jones said.