By Terri Harber — The purchase of three vehicles was approved for two fire departments serving Chaves County. These proposed expenditures were presented to the county commissioners during recent meetings.
This month, two requests were made by the East Grand Plains Fire Department. This volunteer agency asked to buy a Type I Wildland apparatus from Unruh Fire, a company in Sedgwick, Kansas, that builds custom Wildland fire apparatus, brush trucks and heavy Wildland-Urban interface units with both off-road mobility and tactical fire suppression, its website stated.
The total cost for a replacement vehicle for this department would be $264,288, with $147,472 from that funding source and the remaining amount, $116,816, from the Fire Protection Fund. This money was awarded by the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
East Grand Plains will also be acquiring a Pierce Pumper from Siddons Martin Emergency Group, headquartered in Houston, Texas. The cost of this vehicle is $939,717, with a combination of funds to replace this vehicle and equipment and $141,717 also from the Fire Protection Fund.
In September, the Sierra Volunteer Fire Department requested to buy a 2025 Freightliner BX Tanker for $578,390. The cost of the vehicle comes from the department’s funds for scheduled replacements, members of the fire department said.
These vehicles are described as being for firefighting in locations where few or no hydrants are available.
“It serves as a highly efficient ‘water tender’ to supply rural or isolated fire scenes with a continuous flow of water,” according to Pierce Manufacturing, the company that constructs the bodies of these vehicles, then adds a Freightliner chassis.
New firefighting vehicles contain many custom features that allow departments to have uses that fulfill the agencies’ local and specific needs.
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