Copyright 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.
By TREVOR MAXWELL
Staff Writer
Portland Press Herald (Maine)
Coleman Clarke put the engine in reverse and slowly backed the firetruck onto a waiting barge in Casco Bay.
Slowly, because this single piece of equipment, all stainless steel and gleaming red paint, is worth a quarter of a million dollars.
And it’s the first new firetruck in Long Island’s history.
“It feels pretty good,” said Clarke, who will turn 40 in a few months and has been chief of the island’s department of call firefighters for nearly half of his life.
On Monday, he accompanied the new truck to the island, after its long journey from a manufacturing plant in Nebraska. The Smeal Freedom Series pumper truck was driven to Maine last week, stored at a warehouse in Scarborough, then brought to East End boat launch in Portland for the barge ride.
Clarke, with help from Bonnie Littlefield of the Cumberland County Emergency Management Agency, wrote the federal grant application that ultimately paid for 90 percent of the truck. The town paid only $22,500.
“When you live on an island, what you have for equipment is all you have to work with,” he said. “I feel very fortunate that we were able to get the grant.”
At Long Island’s fire barn, Clarke oversees a crew of 16 firefighters and a fleet of relics.
One of the trucks this new one replaces is a 1956 GMC pumper that failed its performance test last year. It’s being restored for museum use.
Among the other vehicles owned by Long Island: a 1980 pumper that cost $8,500 and was funded by a bottle drive; two tank trucks from the late 1970s; and two other 70s-era pumpers that also failed tests.
“It was time for a new truck,” said 17-year-old John Clarke, the chief’s son, a Portland High School senior who is also a firefighter. “This will definitely be put to good use.”
The truck can pump as much as 1,500 gallons of water per minute. It has a hydraulic generator, deep storage bays and seating for six firefighters in full gear.
Long Island averages about 30 fire calls and as many as 50 medical calls each year, plus search and rescue missions with the U.S. Coast Guard, Clarke said. He wants to improve the department’s insurance rating, to get to the same level as Chebeague and Great Diamond islands.
The grant came through the 2004 Firefighters Act, administered by the Department of Homeland Security. After Clarke learned that Long Island had received the funding, he visited Smeal Fire Apparatus Co. in Nebraska.
“We drove for two hours to get to the plant and all we saw was cornfields,” Clarke said. The model he wanted was too tall and too long to fit in Long Island’s fire barn. So he asked the company to build the same truck, just smaller.
“That’s what we got,” he said.
The truck is 8 feet 6 inches tall and exactly 30 feet long. It fits in the barn with about an inch to spare.