7 News Belize

Corozal Gets A “Brand New Second Hand” Firetruck
posted (November 15, 2019)
Countless times on the news we've told you about the decades old fire trucks that can be found at district substations all across Belize.

Well, yesterday in Corozal, they got a brand new second hand one. Minister Edmond Castro handed over what is being called "a newly acquired fire truck" for the Corozal District. It's actually a used truck in good working condition donated by the Calgary Fire Fighters' Association, from the Calgary Fire Department in Alberta, Canada.

We asked the Fire Chief today whether this 2000 model and trucks of this type are suitable for Belize's fire fighting needs:

Reporter
"One of the recurrent criticism is that yes you all need all the help ou can get, but a lot times its brand new second hand and when they are retired by the fire departments in the US, they have outlived their useful life and so you are inheriting something that you will constantly have to be repairing."

Colin Gillett, Fire Chief
"Actually that is not true because these trucks that the Calgary Fire Department is retiring, they don't have a lot of miles and they are serviced before we get them. So we are very thankful to them for donating this one. They have indicated that they have another ten that the government is looking at buying, so that we can change out all of the older ones that we have. Across there, we got another donation from the Fire-Fighters Without Borders and that one is actually in rotation right now. The good thing about these trucks is that we can get parts for these in the US. The other trucks that they use to get like Dennis or Volvo, those come from a lot further, so those are the ones that takes a lot longer. We are trying to phased those trucks out to get more that we can actually get the parts for a shorter amount of time and actually start to look at the type of trucks that we're using, because one of the things we are trying to understand is when you look at the data, 90% of the fires that we respond to are bush fires. These are not bush trucks. As soon as these trucks come off the road, there are issues because they are so heavy and they dont have 4-wheel drive - they are not made for that."

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