A recent Kitimat Council Meeting saw Council determine that they will be starting a procurement process with the goal of replacing the Kitimat Fire & Ambulance Service’s rescue-pumper truck.
The current version of the truck has been used by the community for close to 2 decades in frontline operations and has been suffering from ever escalating maintenance issues, age related wear and tear and an inability to get support from the truck’s manufacturer, since it went out of business in 2014.
But while the process to get this new truck has begun, it is going to take a while before it actually gets finished.
“The Firetruck won’t actually be here until I believe it’s 2028 possibly, because they have to be built so you put in you r funding first and then the company builds them to your spec, so that’s still a few years away but yes, we are putting in the funding to replace one of our Firetrucks” - Phil Germuth, Mayor of Kitimat
A new edition of the pumper could cost at most $1.8 Million, so that is the amount of money that Kitimat Council is working to get and based on the original recommendation of the replacement, the funds seem as if they will come from the Fire Department’s Equipment Reserve.
The current pumper is the oldest major emergency vehicle that Kitimat’s Fire Department has at the moment and the expected timeline for the new truck to be completed is said to be about 24 months.