Broken fire trucks plague Topeka Fire Department
Originally published 04:50 p.m., July 22, 2008
Updated 09:47 p.m., July 22, 2008
The City of Topeka has no fire trucks to fight a fire in building more than three stories tall.
49 news has learned all three of the trucks that allow Topeka firefighters to battle fires at high heights are broken. The trucks, which are also called aerials, are currently being worked on.
A spokesman for the fire department says they should have one of the aerials back up and running by Thursday. In the meantime, the City says it will rely on help from the Mission Township Fire Department and explore other options.
"Do we send in additional manpower to help people to evacuate faster?" said Greg Bailey, spokesman for the Topeka Fire Department. "Is it a situation where we need Mission to come in and help us out which they've already agreed to do or again, we just have to start going down our options."
One of the broken trucks was just bought this year and is still under warranty. So City officials think it will not cost anything to get it repaired.
"Well, it's certainly not something that's planned, I can assure you of that," Bailey said.
It started with the two main aerials breaking in the past few days. Then a third truck, which is supposed to be a reserve but has continually had problems in the past, also broke.
"Rather than get rid of it, we kept it as a precautionary measure to help us to cut costs in situations like this that may come up," Bailey said.
But the reserve is broken too and now, it's no more useful than the other broken trucks.
"If we don't have these available for use, it delays our operations at times in particular on a high-rise structure," said local Firefighter Union President Kent Dederick.
The City plans to have one of the trucks repaired by Thursday, but that means for the next few days, apartment complexes, the Capitol and any building above three stories would give firefighters extra challenges if it caught on fire.
Bailey says the city will take a closer look at their maintenance programs.
"We're gonna hold them as best we can accountable for keeping us up and running," Bailey said.
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