STERLING — The Sterling City Council listened in shock Monday night as interim Sterling Fire Chief Forrest Reeder presented a sobering report on the state of the fire department’s apparatus and vehicles.

Over the past four years, the department has spent over $400,000 trying to fix several of its vehicles with “severe operational issues,” Reeder told the council during his report at the end of Monday night’s council meeting. To make matters worse, Reeder said, the vehicles experiencing the majority of these problems are arguably some of the most important in the fleet, Truck/Tower 4 and Engines 3 and 5.

SFD has 14 vehicles currently in its fleet, ranging from fire engines and trucks to special-operations trailers and special-use vehicles. Some vehicles are commonly used on calls, while others are reserved for support purposes when needed.

Typically, fire engines carry the water, pump and hose needed to extinguish fires, while firetrucks provide aerial ladders needed to access tall buildings and perform rescues. According to Reeder’s report, SFD only has three fire engines, and one fire truck with an aerial ladder, Truck/Tower 4.

“Truck 4 has been out of service for 10 months,” Reeder said. “Since that particular apparatus has been purchased by the city, it’s been in service less than 100 days in the less than three years that we’ve had it. During that time, it has never been NFPA [National Fire Protection Association] certified for applicable use. The few times that we did use it, it was a roll of the dice in terms of operational risk issues.”

Reeder said the department has spent over $200,000, or just over two-thirds of the original purchase price, on repairs for Truck/Tower 4. Additionally, the department has also spent nearly two-thirds the original purchase price of Engines 3 and 5 trying to maintain and fix them.

Engine 2 is the department’s newest and most reliable engine. Reeder said this means it goes out on nearly every call, accelerating the normal rate of wear and tear on the vehicle.

“We can expect an ongoing series of issues to start to emerge with that,” Reeder said. “It certainly isn’t by any abuse by our staff. The guys take great care of this apparatus, but they are rolling earthquakes as they go down the street.”

Reeder is concerned that as the miles start to take their toll on the overly used Engine 2, a major repair could leave the department in dire straights considering the poor condition of its reserve vehicles. He said Engine 2 currently has a backlog of warranty work that needs to be done, but he is afraid to take it off the streets because he cannot count on the reliability of those reserve units.

“If we drop one rig out of service, we are literally out of additional apparatus,” Reeder said. “That demonstrated itself to us last week at a structure fire we had on the 5th. We didn’t have any available suppression units for backup of our people coming in from off duty to respond to that incident or additional incidents that we have.”

Reeder said the department was forced to improvise during that structure fire.

“Unfortunately, we had to have three of our firefighters pile into the back of a pickup,” Reeder said. “They didn’t have air bags. They didn’t have any suppression equipment with them. It was great that we had them available at the fire scene, but it would have allowed us to do more things had we had an engine for them.”

Another problem is SFD cannot take its apparatus to one single vendor to be repaired. Truck/Tower 4 and Engines 3 and 5 are manufactured by KME Fire Apparatus, which does not have a recognized local vendor.

“They are not a single source provider, which means the cab is built by one company, the chassis and pump built by another company, engine and trans built by additional companies,” Reeder said. “We have five to six vendors for each piece of apparatus that we can’t take to one place to have everything fixed.”

What Reeder revealed next about those apparatus caused 2nd Ward Alderman Joe Stabala-Bright to say he was “shocked” and “horrified.”

“Because of the age of those three apparatus, they are not afforded the same luxury that all of us have with our passenger vehicles,” Reeder said. “We don’t have rollover protection. We don’t have airbag protection. That is a great concern for me and the safety of our firefighters.”

Strabala-Bright responded by saying now is the time for the city to “invest some serious money” in equipment for SFD.

“I’m actually a little horrified that some of my units don’t have airbags,” Strabala-Bright said. “That’s shocking news.”

Further compounding the problem, Reeder said it takes a minimum of two years to get a fire engine and three years to get a firetruck with an aerial ladder. On top of that, the Environmental Protection Agency recently revealed stricter rules starting next year pertaining to heavy-duty trucks and greenhouse gas emissions that could increase purchase prices.

“We estimate by our preferred vendors that there will be over a $100,000 cost increase as the calendar turns on January 1, with the EPA requirements,” Reeder said. “Unfortunately, because everybody is in the same type of a situation as us, the limited number of stock units are becoming scarce. They’re being gobbled up daily because everybody’s trying to meet the January 1 deadline.”

If the situation was not bad enough, Reeder said his current staffing numbers only allow the department to respond to one major incident at a time with no personnel left in reserve to address other potential incidents.

Reeder ended his presentation by providing the council with several decision points for them to consider and his recommendations moving forward.

Decision points

• Adopt a proposed apparatus replacement schedule as a capital improvement program.
• Apply for available grant funding and leasing options to help offset costs.
• Explore the current market’s inventory of available factory stock units.
• Place an order for a new department-specified ladder truck.

Reeder’s recommendations

• Replace Truck/Tower 4 and Engine 3 with a new ladder truck and sell the pair as surplus.
• Upgrade Engine 5 to improve its capability and life span as a reserve unit.
• Order a replacement for Engine 2 within the next 10 years.
• Replace Squad 3 and 4 with an SUV or heavy-duty pickup truck and sell the pair as surplus.