Wheeling Fire Department debut the long -awaited new engine | News, sports, jobs

Photo by: Niamh Coomey

Wheeling Fire Department Rescue 1 Captain Tadd Deluca (left) and fire engineer and paramedic Watson Barsch were instrumental in planning and building the department’s new truck.

The Wheeling Fire Department debut its tailor-made fire engine this week, a planning and construction process that has been manufactured for over four years.

The new ambulance, which is used by the Rescue One Team in Station Two in North Wheeling, is a replacement for the department’s former 15-year-old ambulance. The new vehicle has several updated functions with which the work of the rescue makes it easier and the Wheeling community better serves.

“It is extremely exciting,” said Jim Blazier, fire chief of Wheeling. “We bought the truck and waited for more than two years, and the planning process lasted two years earlier. These trucks are nothing that you buy from the lot, you organize it as you want, and then it is adapted for your specifications.”

One of the biggest advantages of the new truck is that it has 30% more storage space than the previous truck and a easier to navigate layout. Now almost any device on the vehicle can be accessed without moving other objects out of the way, a restructuring that saves the time of first aiders in emergencies.

The state-of-the-art truck also has bridge and cliff rescue skills, a new development for the fire brigade.

“There are many functions we have in this truck that are Game Changers compared to what we had,” said Blazier. “We have a variety of devices there that serve all different facets of rescue, EMS and fire fighting.”

The firefighters and first aiders of the rescue team, supervised by Captain Tadd Deluca, played a major role in finding which features are most advantageous for the new truck.

“The crews that drove the old truck were very significant involved in the planning. So they are very excited, they had a lot of influence on how the truck was created and how the equipment is created in it, so that they conveyed this feeling of performance and success for all the work they did,” said Blazier.

The WFD also consulted other fire brigades in the east coast with custom trucks to obtain input for devices and functions that they found useful and what they wish they had done differently in their own builds.

“We have brought many of these opinions into the game in our planning phases and of course the budget falls into the game. Some of the things we really wanted were not in the budget, so we had to restart and develop things that would work for us that were in the budget, and we came a very nice unit,” said Blazier.

The truck was built by Appleton, the Pierce Manufacturing company based in Wisconsin. Fire leaders made several trips to Appleton to check the truck while he was built, and the team at home in Wheeling was waiting for updates every week.

“The company sent us weekly pictures. Every Friday everyone was waiting with baitatem to get the pictures of the truck, and where it was in the build process, so it was really an exciting process and it is now exciting to have it here and to have it out there to serve the community,” said Blazier.