LIVERMORE – U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins announced Wednesday that the Livermore Fire Department is one of several in Maine to share in $1.2 million from the Department of Homeland Security.
The funds are part of the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program.
Livermore’s share will be $202,500, which Chief Randy Berry wants to use for a tanker-pumper to replace the department’s current 1967 tanker. The local share will be $22,500, or 10 percent, which the town has already approved.
Because of its poor condition, Berry has already taken the old pumper out of service, as he was afraid it was not safe to use. One of the aims of the grant is to get firefighting vehicles older than 1979 off the road, he explained.
“Firefighters die driving those,” he said of the old tanker, which was built from an oil tanker on a Department of Conservation chassis back when his uncle, Carlton Berry, was chief.
The tanker-pumper will also replace another older truck in Livermore’s fleet, the 1981 Engine 4, which scores low for reliability and safety, Berry said.
His plans for the new truck call for a 3,000-gallon tanker with a 1,250-gallon-per-minute pump, equal to his newest pumper. “It really brings our department up to date.”
Berry said the new truck will be a boon not just to Livermore firefighters but to other area departments as well, as it will be available to answer mutual aid calls in Livermore Falls, Jay, Turner, Canton and Wilton, with whom Livermore has written mutual aid agreements.
“I really wrote it to serve the area,” he said. “I value the mutual aid departments highly.”
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