The DeKalb County Fire Department needs your help equipping a new truck at the Temperance Hall station.
Fire Chief Donny Green said the new truck was just purchased, but it does not have all of the necessary equipment. Green said some equipment will be moved over from an old truck, but additional equipment will need to be bought new.
“When we buy a new fire truck from the manufacturer, they build a fire truck,” Green said. “But they don’t equip it with hoses and nozzles and all the other hand tools, flashlights and all that. All we get is basically a standard truck that’s built from the manufacturer. You have to purchase the loose equipment separately.”
Green said the truck needs additional hoses, shelving, and appliances like nozzles from the master streamer.
An all-you-can-eat spaghetti fundraiser dinner set for Friday from 4 to 7 pm at the Mike Foster Multipurpose Center in Smithville. Smith said there is a $2,000 fundraiser goal, which should be enough to cover parts the department does not have.
Green said it costs some $60,000 to fully outfit the truck, which was purchased for some $450,000.
“Fire equipment is very expensive,” Green said. “For example, just one nozzle, which we have nozzles but for an example, one nozzle on a fire apparatus now is about $1,000. A 50 foot section of hose is about $200. And we have to have a lot of hose and a lot of nozzles in other appliances we use in firefighting and certainly the hand tools that go along with that.”
Green said the DeKalb County Fire Department gets county funding, but the budget is stretched thin between 12 stations and some 88 volunteer firefighters countywide. Green said sometimes, the department has to rely on fundraising to help with large projects such as outfitting a truck.
Though the Temperance Hall station is more rural, Green said it serves a large service area. Green said the Center Hill Dam and Edgar Evins State Park are two of the key landmarks in that zone. Green said without the new equipment, the truck can not enter service.
“This equipment is required to be stocked on the truck in order for our insurance evaluation,” Green said. “The property protection classification is determined on the fire department’s ability to mitigate risks, fire risks specifically, in the community. And the insurance services office is a third party that comes in and does property protection classification based off of risk.”
Green said protection classification is graded on a scale of one to ten, and that determines how much each homeowner in our jurisdiction has to pay for their property insurance.
Green said the spaghetti dinner is the department’s first fundraiser of the year. Green said it is a great chance for the department to see what the community needs.