By Josh Stilts
The Brattleboro Reformer
DOVER, Vt. — The East Dover Fire Department is without one of its rescue trucks and its life-saving equipment after the vehicle was stolen from the station sometime between Monday night and Wednesday morning.
The 2005 Ford Rescue vehicle and equipment that was stolen could be worth as high as $250,000, according to Fire Chief Jon Abel.
At about 3:45 a.m. on Wednesday, five members of the department were dispatched to a fire at a sugar house on Parrish Hill in Williamsville.
Abel said they were serving as a cover vehicle and didn’t enter the building where the two rescue trucks were parked until returning from the fire at about 5:30 a.m., which is when he noticed something wasn’t right.
“My initial reaction was to find out if someone had taken the truck to assist us and for whatever reason never ended up on scene,” Abel said.
After retracing the two paths the truck could have taken, Abel said he started a mental checklist of every scenario that would explain why the truck was missing.
“Did we send it out for service and I forgot?” he said. “Did someone get dispatched to another call?”
When Abel contacted dispatch through Fire Mutual Aid in Keene, N.H., they informed him that there was no record of the truck being sent out to an emergency.
“That’s when I knew it was stolen,” Abel said.
Dover Police Chief Robert Edwards said the theft is incredibly disturbing.
“I’ve never heard of a fire rescue truck being stolen,” Edwards said. “It’s sad.”
On Monday, one of the firefighters was performing monthly maintenance checks on the vehicles, which was the last time anyone can be certain the truck was at the station, Abel said.
The East Dover Fire Department, with the help of several other fire departments, including Wilmington and Vernon, is piecing together equipment to load in a personal vehicle in case of an emergency, he said.
Vernon’s Assistant Fire Chief David Andrews, who works with one of the members of the East Dover Fire Department, said the vehicle being stolen is a nightmare.
“I don’t even want to think about what would happen if they were called out to a severe emergency and someone couldn’t be saved because their equipment had been stolen,” Andrews said.
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