Pittsburgh shows off new fire engines
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The city of Pittsburgh has a few new fire engines ready to head into service.
They're big, they're red and they're new, and soon they are going to be hitting the streets of Pittsburgh to help save some lives.
On Thursday, the Pittsburgh's Bureau of Fire proudly showed off three out of its four newest engines in the Strip District.
Chief Darryl Jones says that updating and upgrading the city fleet of some 28 engines and 11 trucks is an ongoing process.
"Every year we are allotted a certain amount of funds depending on the budget," said Jones. "And with that budget, we have to decide what we can afford to get and where the new rigs will go."
These three new rigs will be heading to stations in the Hill District, Wilkinsburg and East Liberty and the engines they will be replacing will then be shifted down to slower stations and the older engines at the slower stations will either be taken out of service or moved to be spare rigs.
Chief Jones says that these three new engines took the Spencer Manufacturing Company in Michigan over two years to build. And he says that Pittsburgh's Bureau of Fire is trying to get all their new engines from the same manufacturer for an important reason.
"We are trying to get a standardized fleet all across the board," said Jones. "It makes it easier to maintain them, instead of buying multiple different parts from multiple manufacturers, we're dealing with one manufacturer, one set of parts."
Unlike some other smaller cities and towns, Pittsburgh doesn't usually sell off their old equipment to smaller municipalities, simply because they are in rough shape when they reach the end of their lifespan.
Chief Jones says that they hope to get about two decades of use out of each of these vehicles.
"We are probably going to get 20 years out of one of these," Jones said. "They are built with aluminum bodies. We specified them to be specific to our topography, our weather here. They are what we call the Pittsburgh spec. They are very durable rigs and so we will get about 20 years because we do have a good maintenance program as well."