Conway firefighters recently welcomed a brand-new engine that has air-conditioning, which its 25-year-old predecessor lacked. On Monday, the Conway Fire Department took delivery of a 2025, E-One Custom Pumper fire engine. The new Engine 2 is the first fire truck purchased by the town of Conway after the Conway Village Fire District dissolved Jan 1.
While the truck was delivered from Desorcie Emergency Products in St. Albans, Vt. it wasn’t pressed into service despite the rash of brush fires that broke out on Wednesday because more work needs to be done to it. “When we take on a new truck, there’s a lot of things that have to happen before we can start using it,” said Conway Fire Chief Phil Remington on Thursday. “Radios have to be installed. Equipment has to be installed. We have to mount tools and stuff like that.” The hope is to have the engine on line by the end of the month.
The new Engine 2 will be much more comfortable than the 2000-model-year engine it replaced because it has air conditioning. Firefighters on Wednesday had to fight a series of brush fires and a hotel fire in the August heat. “Our current engine doesn’t have air conditioning in it, so I can tell you, on a day like yesterday, it is not the most fun to ride home from a fire at 90 degrees,” said Remington. “All you get is the windows down, and when you’re sitting in traffic, that doesn’t do a lot.” He said fires are hot, and the gear is inherently warm and the weather is hot, and sometimes it’s necessary for a firefighter to cool down.
The new truck can carry 1,000 gallons of water and pump at the rate of 1,500 gallons a minute. It cost around $825,000 and will be paid for over five years. The money to buy it came from a town capital reserve account. The previous Engine 2, while it didn’t necessarily have a lot of miles on it, did have a lot of engine hours because the engine powers the pumps, Remington said.
