Yellow Grass Fire Rescue More Prepared for Rural Calls Now!

Recently the Yellow Grass Fire Rescue added an additional unit to their fleet! (Photo below)

"We talked about it and it was in the works for two or three years," told Deputy Chief Allen Altwasser from the Yellow Grass Fire Rescue. "But finally we decided that we should do something. So we bought a thirty foot flat deck trailer and we mounted a 3500 gallon water tank on it which will have a pump that can follow us to the fire and serve as our surge water source. So it can be used by itself, but I think more that it's going to be used as a portable hydrant for the fire engine and our other truck to just keep serving those two. They'll be extinguishing the fire and it'll just be hauling water to us."

So why did the Yellow Grass Fire Rescue decide to purchase this new addition?

"Often times one of the problems we have in a rural location when we're fighting a fire is water supply," explained Altwasser. "And we count on commercial water haulers or farmer's water trucks to bring water to us. But that's not always quick enough. We've got a thousand gallons of water with the fire engine itself but once we have exhausted that we could sit there and wait some time before we're able to get another source of water out there. And that's what really precipitated this. And it reinforced it to us again this spring when we had a fire at a rural yard site. Where we were abled to contain the fire but we had to wait probably close to an hour before we had another source of water. Whereas if we had water there we could have probably extinguished the fire immediately."

Are the trailer and water tank ready to go?

"Well it's not in service yet," Altwasser stated. "We've got the tank mounted on the trailer and the trailer is sitting beside our fire hall. We just have to do some plumbing and add the pump to it. And then it will be ready to go. That should be happening in the next week or two and then it should be in service."

And then how will you be pulling the trailer and water tank to the fires?

"We have the trailer and the water tank but we don't have the semi-tractor," said Altwasser. "So we'll have a list of local partners, farmers and businesses that have semi-tractors that we can source. So when we do have a fire where we need it we can call that list. And then somebody with a semi-tractor locally will go hook on and it will be loaded and ready to go. Then they'll just have to pull it to our scene. And we've got enough partners that I think it will work out just fine."

The Yellow Grass Fire Rescue services a fairly large area for their size by heading up to the Lewvan area, and all the way down to the Trossachs area, just about to McTaggart, and almost to Lang.

"That's kind of the rough area that we cover," Altwasser told. "But I mean some of us go over the 35 Highway as well. But that's typically the area that we operate in."

What else have you been busy with?

"We're training, with the Covid situation that kind of put a wrinkle in how we normally do things," expressed Altwasser. "But with the opening up we're getting more back to normal. We're doing our 1001 training for our whole crew right now. So we're working our way through that along with our regular practice nights that are twice a month. We were doing a lot of Zoom meeting for our 1001 training before things opened up. So it wasn't business as usual but we're getting back to somewhat of a normal."

Are you looking for more firefighters to join you?

"We're always open to people who are interested in joining our department," Altwasser exclaimed. "If someone's really interested we look after their equipment and their training. So just get a hold of us and let us know."

Do you have any final words to share with our listeners?

"I would just like to thank the community for all of their support," answered Altwasser. "The surrounding communities have been really supportive of our efforts. We've really stepped up what we've done in the past few years. And we've got a really good fire crew now. We've never had a better trained and capable crew. So I'm proud of our crew as well."

For more information feel free to follow the Yellow Grass Fire Rescue on Facebook.