MEDWAY, Maine — Fire Chief John Lee knows that his department’s trucks are as well-maintained as his firefighters can make them, but someday soon, two tankers won’t be able to answer any more alarms.
The tankers are rapidly approaching a point where no number of volunteer repairs done by his on-call firefighters will be good enough, Lee said. Both have leaky, rusted-out tanks that require constant repair. Sooner or later they won’t be worth the effort and money to fix, he said. One also leaks oil regularly.
“It’s no one’s fault. It’s just that the equipment’s getting old,” Lee said Thursday, “and even if we do spend the money, we won’t have the time. We are not full-time firefighters. We have our own lives to lead.”
Both trucks are hybrids. The 1,400-gallon tanker is a converted 1986 plow truck. The other, a 2,000-gallon truck, has a 1992 chassis coupled with a tank that dates back to 1976 or 1977, firefighter Greg Hale said.
In many ways, the tankers are the lifeblood of the Medway Fire Department which, like most rural departments, serves an area that almost entirely lacks fire hydrants.
The Katahdin region town, which has less than 2,000 residents, has 83 miles of paved and dirt roads within its 43 square miles. The winding roads add to the wear on the vehicles. Medway Fire also contracts to cover Molunkus, which is about 38 square miles, firefighters said.
Lee has applied for a $265,000 federal grant to buy a new tanker truck for the last three years, but has been turned down, he said. Successful grant applications have bought his firefighters new radios and a thermal imaging camera. Filed in August, his latest grant application for a new tanker won’t be answered until next summer.
Lee said he is proud of his 16-member department for its loyalty and dedication. Like many fire departments in rural Maine, his has a constant need for new recruits. But the firefighters who are there have formed a kind of family, he said.
When his crews spent all night battling an arson fire on Thursday that destroyed a house, his wife bought crew members several pizzas, Lee said.
But not having proper equipment will tax morale beyond being a safety issue. So Lee said he is wondering whether he should do something he really doesn’t want to do — seek town tax money next spring to buy a used tanker truck to replace the two older models, he said.
“It will all come down to the federal grants,” he said, “and how long these trucks will last.”
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