NEWRY – The town’s new $670,000 ladder firetruck was delivered to Newry early Sunday evening from Pennsylvania.
The 2005 Metz Aerial is a first of its kind for Maine, said Newry Assistant Chief Randy Harrington on Friday afternoon.
“It’s different than what one sees for aerials in Portland or Lewiston. It’s unique,” Harrington said in a phone interview Friday afternoon.
“Its size and ability will greatly improve personal safety and our ability to meet the town’s fire protection needs for many years,” he said in an e-mail later that afternoon.
The 36-foot-long combination ladder-pumper truck was specifically designed for maneuvering in tight quarters on steep side hills.
“It’s 8-feet shorter than conventional ladder trucks, and it’s able to take a 500-pound basket load. Auburn’s ladder has a 1,000-pound tip load, but for us, it was size versus what we needed, and we needed mobility more than a 1,000-pound payload in the bucket,” Harrington said.
Weighing 53,000 pounds, the truck is also 9 tons lighter than similar trucks from other manufacturers. The smaller size and lighter truck is needed because Newry’s exploding growth is being channeled onto ridges and mountainsides. The town is nestled in the scenic, rugged terrain of the Mahoosuc Range.
Newry is also home to Sunday River Ski Resort, which has multistory buildings.
“There are a lot of times when we are called to subdivisions, which are on roads that are fairly steep and pitched. Everybody wants to build on the side of a mountain,” he said.
The new firetruck condenses two trucks into one, providing a pumping capability of 1,500 gallons per minute and a computerized 105-foot ladder that can, in 60 seconds, go from being nested atop the truck to fully extended.
“There are a lot of little quirks to it,” Harrington said.
Like lifting features with the ladder.
“Fully retracted, we can use the first stick, which is 35 feet long, to lift a car if we need to. The majority of our calls are a lot of auto accidents, search and rescues, injured hikers,” he said.
The single-axle firetruck seats six firefighters.
“So, when we go out on mutual aid to Rumford or out of town, it allows us to take a complete crew in one truck,” Harrington said.
Newry has a call force of 13 firefighters for two stations – one on the Sunday River side of town and one on the Bear River side. Now, with the new addition, it has five firetrucks, and two old loaners from the Maine Forest Service.
The new ladder-pumper replaces a 1969 Seagraves center-mounted ladder truck that the ski resort bought for the department in the 1990s. The old truck failed 2 years ago.
At town meeting in March 2004, voters approved using $670,000 to buy the new truck.
Grants were unavailable, despite several attempts. So the town used $120,000 from its capital reserve account and financed the remaining $550,000 through a 10-year loan with the Maine Municipal Bond Bank.
Harrington said Sunday evening that sometime next month, the department would hold an open house to show people the new firetruck. It will be at the Sunday River Fire Station on Sunday River Road.
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