Fire department gets compact truck

The fire department recently took delivery of a brand new skid unit — a small, go-anywhere sixwheeled firetruck.

Money to purchase the unit was in the budget, with an estimated cost of $8,000. Fire Chief Steve Sims said this is something the department has needed and has been attempting to get in the budget, but this is the year it worked out.

“We needed a way to get down into brush fires,” he said.

Given the city’s topography and the number of brush fires the department faces, he said, this truck is an important tool for the

city’s firefighters.

Additionally, he said, it could prove useful in extracting patients from the city’s new trail system and can haul a stokes basket, a type of stretcher that is often used in search and rescue incidents.

This unit, he said, has already seen enough use to pay for itself, getting firefighters into tricky terrain where they would otherwise have to walk.

Currently, he said, the truck is kept at Station 2, on the east side of town, which places it near the trails. It’s street legal, he explained, complete with lights and turn signals, which means it can be driven straight from the station to the scene — though, if the scene is further out, he explained, the tiny truck can be trailered.

“Works out pretty good,” Sims said.

Keith Bryant/The Weekly Vista Fire inspector Gary Bowman (left) pilots the department’s new skid unit while Bella Vista firefighter Blake Barrett runs up to talk with him at a brush fire near the intersection of Hallock Drive and Gates Lane on Tuesday, March 6. The compact truck was used three times that day alone, fire chief Steve Sims said.