Fresh off the line
Sonora Fire Department welcomes first new engine in 16 years
Afirehouse tradition that dates back more than 100 years to the era of horse-drawn equipment played out Monday morning as the Sonora Fire Department celebrated the arrival of its first new engine since 2005.
Masked personnel from the department got behind the shiny new $561,000 firefighting machine, which was custom built over the past year-plus in Nebraska, and pushed it into the station on South Shepherd Street for the first time shortly after 8 a.m.
“It’s been a tradition when you get a new engine to push it into the station, so that’s what we did today because we’re really happy, honored and proud to have a new fire engine,” said Sonora Fire Chief Aimee New, who wrote the grant application that helped cover most of the price tag.
New said the ritual, known as a “push-in ceremony,” harkens back to when firefighters used steamers that were pulled by horses and had to push the equipment into the station at the end of each day.
About $380,000 to purchase the engine came from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant program that New applied for in mid-2019, after a previous unsuccessful attempt in 2019.
An additional $100,000 of the engine's total cost came out of the city's General Fund, which the city council approved in November 2019, while the rest came from money the department received as reimbursement from other agencies for responding to fires outside of the city.
The new “type 1 urban interface” engine was manufactured by Smeal, a Spartan Motors Brand, which built it to the specifications requested by the department.
Roy Cobb, a Sacramento-based representative for Smeal who drove the engine to the station on Monday, said no two engines are the same based on the different characteristics of the areas they are intended to serve.
“Sonora is a unique place in many ways,” he said. “You have all of the requirements of a city, but you also have the mountains, so you need dual uses.”
Cobb said one aspect of the city's new engine that's different from many others is that it has two pumps, including a diesel auxiliary pump that can be used while rolling for wildland fire incidents.
Completion of the engine was a few months behind the original schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which Cobb said emerged just as they were starting to put it together.
“All of the design work happened PRE-COVID, but all of the manufacturing was done at the high of COVID,” he said. “There were a lot of times when guys (in Nebraska) could not work. When you have an assembly process, it's a cascading effect.”
Cobb also said parts from other areas were also delayed due to the pandemic, while the shipping process itself was also slowed due to the rise in people buying items online.
The new engine will replace a 1972 Van Pelt that the department has been forced to use several times in recent years despite its age, though it's now being stored in the city's equipment yard.
New said the National Fire Protection Association recommends engines only be used in frontline responses for 10 years, followed by five years as a reserve, due to evolving safety enhancements and requirements.
“It comes with stateof-the-art safety features for our firefighters,” including self-contained breathing apparatus in each seat she said.
A 1996 engine that the department currently uses will now become a reserve, while the second-newest engine built in 2005 will be used for type 3 wildland incidents. The department also has a ladder truck built in 1996.
The department spent $25,000 last year for maintenance on the 2005 engine, New said.
“As they get older, it's very costly to repair the engine, so having the reliability of a new engine is going to be very wonderful for the city,” she said.
New also hopes to build upon her grantwriting success by applying for another grant through the same program this year to purchase a new type 6 engine, which appears more like a pickup truck with a 300-gallon water tank.
The new engine that arrived Monday is expected to be in service and responding to calls within 30 days after all the final adjustments are made and required identifying decals are applied.