Miner's fire department gets new truck

MINER, Mo. -- The Miner Volunteer Fire Department is back on track with a new truck, a new funding source and hope for the future.

The city of Miner received delivery Wednesday afternoon of the first new fire engine for the department in about a decade.

"Our fire tax at work," Miner Board of Aldermen member Deloris Smith said.

The city's voters approved a quarter-cent sales tax in April to fund operation of the fire department.

The board in May approved the $216,955 purchase of the new firetruck from Sentinel Emergency

Solutions in Arnold, Missouri.

"That is the delivery price," city clerk Darrin Skinner said. "They are going to use the equipment from our old truck that is broken down to equip this one -- hoses, air packs, hand tools, ladders -- all the miscellaneous equipment."

With an interest rate of 4.28 percent on the financing and quarterly payments of $6,701.84, "it will be paid off in 2025," Skinner said. "It is financed through Montgomery Bank on a lease-purchase."

"I'm excited and nervous," Zach Albright, part-time fire chief for the Miner Volunteer Fire Department, said. "It has been a long process, but I am just happy this day is finally here."

About half of the fire department's 26 volunteer firefighters were at the fire station for the delivery and appeared to be excited.

"They have worn my phone out, like a bunch of kids at Christmas," Albright said.

The new apparatus is a Centurion pumper, Skinner said.

"It is a firetruck that is capable of pumping water and holding water for firefighting," he said. "It is usually used as a front-line firetruck."

"This will give us two engines -- an in-town and out-of-town -- and three brush trucks. And we are currently housing a tanker that belongs to the Sikeston (Missouri) Rural Fire District," Albright said.

"Now that we have this truck, we will be able to fulfill all of our out-of-town duties as well -- we will be back in business for that," Skinner said. "This new firetruck will be used for in-town responses, for fires inside the city limits. The truck we had doing that will move to the outside response."

Mayor Darren Chapman said this is the first of "many more things to come" for the fire department.

"The next thing they need, to me, is a new building," Smith said. "That, and a full-time fire chief."

"We would like a new building -- our building is in need of renovations that are going to be costly,"

Albright said. "We've kind of outgrown that building."

Skinner said if the board decided to make the department's fire chief a full-time position, as discussed during board meetings, "it would help the city's ISO and the efficiency of the department with a person there every day to take care of the business."