Medical Lake department looks to replace fire truck

For a truck that's a quarter-century old, Medical Lake's wildland fire fighting rig looks pretty dang good, in vehicle-years.

And that might have residents wondering why Fire Chief Jason Mayfield is seeking to surplus the vehicle.

Simply put it's primarily a matter of safety. The 1993 Chevrolet operates with the use of one of those ancient devices known as a clutch in order to help shift gears.

Today's younger firefighters drive gas-conscious smaller cars with automatic transmissions. Learning to drive a clutch is doable but driving it in places other than the street presents issues.

"We get them off road and the fear is they are going to kill it (the motor) coming up a hill, it will stall out on them or something and it's going to roll back," Mayfield said.

And then who knows what the result might be?

"It's a challenge enough getting them to learn how to drive a fire engine, the size, the weight the visibility," Mayfield said.

Mayfield, 43, learned to drive a vehicle with a clutch. "If it's got wheels we can drive it," he said. However, with some notable turn-over the past few years, the department members who have driven farm trucks, or have their CDL license, have phased themselves out.

"It was probably an issue longer than that, but we had enough folks around who could cover it," Mayfield said.

"It has certain redeeming aspects. The truck is great because for a wildland truck, it carries a ton of water," Mayfield said. It carries 750 gallons which is kind of a rarity for a wildland truck.

But competing downsides pushed the scale towards offering it to another agency while the price is good and proceeds can go towards a replacement.

"It only seats three and you have to be really close to the person sitting in the middle when you're shifting gears," Mayfield said. The other downside it has while being a high-clearance off-road style truck it's only a two-wheel drive.

The city hopes to grab $35,000 to $40,000 and maybe do what Spokane County Fire District No. 9 did - building their own brush rig from a bare chassis for about $60,000, a savings of about $30,000, Mayfield told the Medical Lake City Council at its April 17 meeting.

There are other reasons to try to part with the truck. Foremost because every year they wait the value decreases.

But they just can't run 30-year-old trucks consistently without seeing problems, Mayfield said. Medical Lake's fire department maintenance budget does not have a lot of rainy-day reserves in it.

"We don't have a ton of money to start fixing stuff," Mayfield said.

"We took a real hard look at it last year and tried to balance what we could and could not do - we have a lot of needs, what we're going to look to replace first - because this is the average age of our fleet (20–25 years)" Mayfield said.

When the city first started doing EMS, this truck was the rig. "It's served its purpose," Mayfield said.

Personally, Mayfield said he would like to have a new engine for city calls. Risk management to the city is a little more important that the commitment to wildland work. Plus, other area agencies in their mutual aid agreement are capable of covering what have been limited instances.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].