New Pumper for Pleasant Hill
Posted By J.T. on July 1, 2010
From the Pleasant Hill Times:
F. Kirk Powell
The Pleasant Hill Fire District will have a new pumper on the road later this summer.
Fire Chief Steve Long and Assistant Fire Chief Nathan Carpenter picked up the new pumper from the manufacturer in Breda, Iowa, earlier this month and plan to make it operational the first week of August when firefighters have had the opportunity to equip the new truck and train with it.
A new pumper is part of equipment being requested by the Pleasant Hill Fire District in a $4.5 million bond issue on the ballot in August, but the need for a new fire truck was so urgent that the fire board agreed to purchase it early under a lease-purchase agreement.
“We desperately needed a new pumper,” Fire Chief Steve Long says. ”Both of our old pumpers are in such poor mechanical condition that we couldn’t wait.”
In fact, the two older pumpers have both broken down and had to be towed from a call three times in the past two months and the fire district has had to pay nearly $4,000 so far this summer in repair bills.
“We wanted to wait to buy the new pumper until after the bond election,” Long said, “but we didn’t have a choice.”
Long said the fire district will be able to make payments on the lease-purchase agreement if the bond issue falls short in August, but it would be tight.
“We couldn’t take the chance that one of our other pumpers would break down on the way to a fire and result in the loss of life or serious injury,” the fire chief said.








