When three downtown Lisbon Street buildings burned last December in Lewiston, firetrucks from Topsham to Turner responded.

But the biggest piece of equipment – also the tallest, the newest and stationed nearby – was in Massachusetts for repairs. Auburn’s 102-foot-tall Tower 1 was out of service … again.

“If I could have done that differently, I would have,” said Auburn Fire Chief Wayne Werts.

The phone calls started the next day.

“They wanted to know why that truck wasn’t on the line, and just where it was,” Werts said.

The trip to Massachusetts wasn’t its first. Since it came online in 2003, Tower 1 has developed a cantankerous reputation. Records show the three-quarters-of-a-million-dollar vehicle spent 15 days out of service in 2004 for warranty work – repairing 24 different computer glitches, leaks and reluctant pieces of equipment.

It’s gotten better. Warranty work was down to 11 days in 2005 and seven days last year.

Werts said he’s confident most of the problems are behind the city. But he admits it looked bad last month when the fire broke out.

Welders at Massachusetts’ Bulldog Fire Apparatus were repairing damage to one of the truck’s outriggers at the time. It was a minor problem; it didn’t affect the truck’s performance and could have been put off for weeks – if the chief had known the truck would be needed.

“I wish I would have had a crystal ball to know when a fire is coming, because I would have sent it down later,” Werts said.

Werts takes the long view. Tower 1 will be the centerpiece of the city’s firefighting arsenal for the next 20 years.

High tech

Tower 1 replaced the city’s old Ladder 1 beginning in 2003. It was a $711,000 vehicle full of the latest technological equipment. Three separate computers control the truck’s water pumps, its leveling system and the mechanism that moves the ladder itself.

It’s also a traveling storehouse, expected to disgorge all the equipment firefighters need for any given emergency.

“You’ve got to be able to put out fires, cut people out of cars and do medical calls – all on one truck,” he said.

It all makes the truck more capable, but more complex.

“Part of our demand, we want our trucks to be as simple as possible,” Werts said. “We don’t want all of these gadgets and electronic stuff that’s going to break. But you just can’t buy trucks like that any more. It’s all electronics, and all computers.”

The result is that local mechanics can do very little maintenance on the trucks. Firefighters themselves are only able to change light bulbs and lenses, lubricate the ladder’s joints and perform basic maintenance.

The city budgets $75,000 per year to maintain the Fire Department’s fleet of 12 vehicles, its boat and trailer and some older pieces used as back-up equipment. Werts said he’s usually able to stay well within that budget. Last year, for example, fire vehicle maintenance cost about $45,000.

“It goes up and down a lot, based on the age of your fleet,” he said. Older vehicles tend to have more expensive maintenance issues.

“Keep in mind, these are heavy vehicles and they take a lot of pounding on these Maine roads,” he said.

Both Lewiston and Auburn have similar costs for fire vehicle maintenance. Lewiston spent $41,491 for fire fleet maintenance in fiscal year 2006.

Lewiston Fire Chief Paul Leclair said that in the end, firetrucks are vehicles. “And like any other vehicle, they need to be repaired some times,” he said. Some service you can’t put off.

“If it’s just a compartment light or something, it can wait,” he said. “But if you have to schedule something like a brake repair for your ladder truck, you don’t have a choice. The only thing you can do is schedule the work as soon as possible and get it back in service.”

It was maintenance issues that finally did in Tower 1’s predecessor. The metal supports for the old truck’s ladder had become rusted and Werts and his crew were sure it wouldn’t meet the safety standards in its next inspection. Those inspections, performed once per year on ladder trucks by Underwriters Laboratory, are required to meet insurance standards.

“And the engine of that truck looked like a boiler fire,” said Capt. Scott Hanson, in charge of maintenance for the city’s fleet.

Werts relies on a handful of local mechanics to do basic motor maintenance for the city’s fleet. But specialized work, especially for the aerial part of the truck, relies on specialized mechanics – in Auburn’s case, Woodville, Mass.-based Bulldog Fire Apparatus, the New England sales representative for truckmaker KME Fire Apparatus.

“Most times the people from Bulldog would come up here and take it out of service for an hour or two,” he said. “Other times, they’d come up and get it and bring it back to Massachusetts with them.”

Most trips south kept the truck out of service for a day or two.

“The longest it was gone, just after we had gotten it, it was down in Massachusetts for about a week,” he said.

The regions’ fire departments keep in touch when it comes to vehicle maintenance, through their mutual aid agreement. For example, Lewiston’s Ladder 1 becomes the first responder to any fire calls in Auburn when Tower 1 is out of service. Tower 1 returns the favor when Ladder 1 needs work, according to Lewiston’s Leclair.

“A couple of years back, we had a transmission problem in our Ladder 1, and we were out of service for 10 to 14 days,” Leclair said. “That work has to be done. The only thing you can do is notify your neighbors.”

Warranty

Luckily for the fire department’s budget, all of the truck’s growing pains were covered by warranty. It has a lifetime warranty on the metal structure, as well as one-year warranties on the other systems.

“But when we started having problems, I told them it wasn’t going to work,” he said. “… We wanted a guarantee that things were going to stay fixed,” he said. The company agreed to extend most of the warranties.

The last three warranties, on the hydraulic system, air system and the interlock system for the outriggers, expire in September.

“This past year, it’s been a pretty reliable piece of equipment,” he said. “We haven’t had any problems – that we haven’t caused ourselves.”

It was operator error that led to the truck being out of service late last December. Crews at a 2006 fire – Werts isn’t sure which one – forgot to remove a bracing pipe from one of the huge outriggers.

“It’s there in case the hydraulics fail, the outrigger won’t collapse,” Werts said. The pipe needs to be removed each time the outriggers are pulled back into the truck.

“We had to move the truck, and somebody forgot that pipe was there,” he said. The result was damage to the hole that holds the pipe. It was forgotten until the Underwriters Laboratory inspection weeks later.

“The inspector passed everything but that,” he said. It required a trip down to Massachusetts for repairs.

Lewiston’s Leclair said Auburn’s big tower would have been welcome at the Lisbon Street fire, but he doubts it would have made much of a difference.

“Tower 1 was exactly where it needed to be – getting maintenance,” Leclair said.

The site was already crammed full with as many firetrucks as it could handle. “That was the logistics of that fire,” he said. “We had four ladder trucks on site, and there just was not room for a fifth. We had narrow alleys, power lines and not much more room.”

Werts said he’s expecting a different repair situation with Auburn’s newest truck, the $365,000 Engine 3. That truck came on line late in 2006. It’s less complex than the tower, weighs less and can be maintained instate. Plus, the city has two trained pump engine specialists that can handle most of the maintenance issues.

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