By Evan Johnson
KILLINGTON—At the Killington Select Board meeting Tuesday, Jan. 24, the Killington Volunteer Fire Department updated the town on new fire trucks and the opportunity for a new fire station on Killington Road (known locally as the Access Road).
Chief Gary Roth said the department was going forward with an option to look at the feasibility of building a fire station on Killington Road and to complete borings.
Recently, Roth traveled to Pennsylvania to examine a KME tanker truck and found that it did not meet department specifications. “Because of the size regulations of our station we purposefully put certain numbers in the [purchase] contract so that it would fit in our barn,” he said.
Roth estimated the truck would be finished in the next one and a half months before going to New York for completion. It would be delivered to the fire department a week later.
The department is also looking to purchase a truck that would fill the need of two vehicles due for replacement. The department currently has a platform truck that Roth said responds to 4 percent of the department’s calls and an engine truck that is overdue for replacement by two years.
Roth explained the department’s plan is to replace both trucks with a smaller pump and ladder truck called a quint, produced by Pierce Manufacturing in Wisconsin, that would maneuver better on local roads and respond to more calls. The combined cost of replacing both the platform and the engine would be $2.1 million, while the quint would cost $1 million.
Roth said the single truck would reduce the square footage of the new fire station maintenance costs.
“This is a plan the whole fire department has gotten on board with,” Roth said. “We feel operationally it would streamline things as well as make us more efficient.”
