Pa. city purchases used fire truck as reserve pumper

By John Latimer
The Lebanon Daily News

LEBANON, Pa. — Lebanon City Council on Monday night approved spending $20,000 in 2010 Community Development Block Grant funds to purchase a used rescue engine owned by the city's Goodwill Fire Co.

Fire Commissioner Duane Trautman recommended purchasing the 1982 Seagrave for use as a reserve pumper. It is especially useful, he said, because it is equipped with a foam dispersal unit for battling chemical fires.

Goodwill Fire Co. put the Seagrave up for sale because it is replacing it with a 1996 Spartan/Saulsbury rescue engine, he said.

"It would be a shame to see the engine leave town. In my opinion, this city needs five engines," he said. "This engine would serve as the reserve engine as well as a foam engine — a hazardous-materials engine. With the trains and the traffic we have coming through the city, that engine has an around-the-pump foam proportioning system that is a really valuable tool. None of our other engines have it."

Because the city is part of the Lebanon County Firefighters Association foam task force, the Lebanon Bureau of Fire has an emergency supply of 200 gallons of foam at its immediate disposal, Trautman said.

"Us staying in the county foam task force ... keeps 200 gallons of county association-owned foam here," he said. "And that engine gives us the ability to use it."

Money for the purchase was available without cutting other spending because the city received more CDBG funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development this year than it had anticipated, community development coordinator Melissa Quinones told council at last week's workshop meeting.

"For our allocation we had budgeted $860,000 but actually received $913,000," she said. So we are going to use some of the additional funds to purchase fire equipment."

This is the first time since the city purchased a 2001 Ferrera/HME engine in 2002 that CDBG money has been used for the Lebanon Bureau of Fire, Quinones said. That engine and the 1982 Seagrave will be the only two pieces of apparatus owned by the city. All other fire equipment is owned by the various volunteer fire companies which purchased them.

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