Our Department welcomed a new fire fighting tool during a special ceremony Saturday.

The department had its new $210,000 tender blessed, looked over and pushed back into the fire station during a brief ceremony Saturday.

“Its a big asset to the community,” said Fire Chief Gary Crane of the tender, which boosts the department’s water hauling capacity and will aid especially in fighting rural fires.

“Now we can show up with 4,000 gallons of water when we go to a fire, Using both the new tanker and pumper and the other tanker ” he said. “That’s a big thing right there, because we don’t have hydrants in the country. We have to haul all our water.”

The department took possession of the bright “Palmyra green” truck Friday when several of the volunteers accompanied Crane to the Danko Emergency Equipment Company assembly plant in Snyder Neb 

 Blessing  the new truck was our Chaplin Pastor Alvin Lewis who acknowledged the value of the new truck from his chruchs own experience

Pastor Lewis recalled a morning three years and a short week ago when we was called to a fire at his own church Mission Hill Baptist Church.  That night you would have loved to have had this truck. said Lewis who's church burned to the ground due to arson.

Lewis prayed "Lord we pray that this may be used to bring blessing to others going through difficult times."

The ceremony also featured an old tradition in which fireman pushing the fire apparatus back into  the station recalling a time when horse drawn equipment had to be pushed back into the station because the horses would not back it in. In the modern days we put the truck in reverse while the firefighters pushed the truck in.

after the ceremony, the crew demonstrated some of the new things on the truck like the fold down unit that holds the dump tanks.

There are more pictures ont the picture side of the web site and also a video of the ceremony under video link.