DeKalb Fire Department’s new $600K fire engine settles in to station No. 3

DeKALB — The DeKalb Fire Department unveiled, dedicated and ceremonially washed its new station No. 3 fire engine Monday, a 2022 Rosenbauer that DeKalb Fire Chief Mike Thomas said cost more than $600,000.

In a tradition that dates back to the days of horse-drawn carriages, DeKalb firefighters washed down the new fire engine before pushing it into the station’s garage at 950 W. Dresser Road where it was fitted with equipment. Thomas, a 27-year veteran of the DeKalb department, said it was exciting to experience the procedure.

“I haven’t done it before,” Thomas said. “I’ve been here a long time. So I either missed it when we replaced engines or we didn’t have an opportunity to celebrate getting another piece of equipment in service. So it’s pretty exciting, and when you’re the guy that gets to help make decisions like this, it’s very satisfying,” Thomas, 58, said.

Lt. Bill Lynch, who moved emergency response equipment from the old engine into the new one, said getting a new rig is “a big deal” for the fire department, especially because the old engine had a history of breaking down and being unreliable.

“To get a new engine that is this quality is outstanding, we’re really please,” Lynch said.

The new Rosenbauer replaced a 16-year-old engine Thomas said has “a lot of hard miles on it” and is the busiest in the department. Typically an engine stays in service for 10 to 15 years. As the COVID-19 pandemic slowed supply chains, however, the decision to replace the engine fell to Thomas, who took over the department in April.

“We were able to contact the maker and they said ‘Yeah we have this one ready to go, it’s on the assembly line currently,’ and if it wasn’t spoken for then we wanted to jump on it because we knew we’d get within a year,” Thomas said.

The brand new Rosenbauer cost roughly $624,000, plus around $90,000 worth of state-of-the-art equipment, said Thomas.

DeKalb Fire and Police Commission chair, Sam Finch, 50, said the acquisition was necessary because of costly repairs to the old engine.

“So the cost efficiency in repairing old [equipment] is getting to be sky high, Finch said. “Where we can get a new one and the repair would be a lot less.

Deputy Fire Chief of Operations Don Faulhaber, 51, said the department got lucky with a shortened wait for a new engine, despite lengthy wait times for a lot of other vehicles. The department’s been waiting on new ambulances for 16 months, he said. The trick was getting a vehicle previously used for demonstrations.

“We had a couple of little changes to it but we liked it as is and that allowed us to get, and even our next one is going to be demo’d for a short period of time, and that’s what allowed us to get it,” Faulhaber, a 27-year veteran of the department, said.

The next new engine, which will replace Engine No. 1, is expected to arrive Jan. 1.