EMBARRASS- Most North Country residents are used to doing things themselves, and that attitude and experience proved essential for the Embarrass Fire Department, which recently built its own fire truck as a do-it-yourself project. The new rig was on display at the community’s winter festival this past weekend, which went on despite this year’s lack of winter weather.
The truck, now called Rescue 4, is known as a medium wet rescue vehicle, although it’s designed for multiple uses. It includes an 8,000-gallon tank, so it can be used to respond to vehicle fires or other small fires and will also be outfitted with medical rescue equipment. The truck is designed so that a single responder can take the truck to an accident scene and respond effectively with both medical gear as well as an ability to fight fire.
Fire Chief Tom Martin said the department bought the surplus truck chassis for $6,000, and the department has invested about $55,000 into the project, including custom fabricating the truck’s body to build a water tank and equipment storage. The vehicle would have cost about $350,000 to purchase new.
Martin said department member Eric Garman has been leading the restoration effort. Justin Koschak, who is a member of the Pike-Sandy-Britt Fire Department, custom designed and welded the new body, and the department was given use of heated garage space from Charlie Winger where they repainted and then assembled the new truck.
The truck has some sentimental value to Martin. The truck was originally stationed at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corp base camp in southern California. Martin’s father was stationed there during that period in the early 1950s and worked on this same type of truck. Martin’s father passed away two years ago, and the department received the truck, which they bought from another Minnesota fire department a year ago.
The department has had a busy year with other projects, including redoing all the fire signs in their service area, as well as constructing a helipad landing zone with a concrete pad and lighting on a few acres of land adjacent to the fire hall, that the Rantala family donated to the department. This created a safer zone for medical rescue, without the worry of having vehicles or people in the area, which was the case at the previous zones which include the old Four Corners lot or the horse arena area at Timber Hall. The new helipad zone is designed so that one person can secure the scene.