Orange Rural Receives New Ladder

HILLSBOROUGH – It looked to all the world like Christmas had come early to Orange Rural Fire Department.

Firefighters and town leaders gathered to officially hand over the keys of a new 95-foot aerial platform ladder truck at the Churton Street station Tuesday, Nov. 22, and those involved were all smiles.

For the town’s part, officials beamed at the arrival of a piece of equipment that would make huge strides in protecting residents but comes at a highly reduced cost from the original price. The fire department—a private, nonprofit corporation contracted by the town to provide residents emergency service—rejoiced at the addition of a new member to its fleet.

“I never thought I’d see this,” Chief Jeff Cabe said. “I never thought we’d be at this point, buying this kind of piece of equipment for the town and the rural department and the way we operate and the town, the way it’s built. So I am ecstatic. I don’t know how to express it.”

The standard edition, 46-foot-long truck cost $754,000, brand new on all counts except for a 20-year-old refurbished ladder from an aerial out of Syracuse, N.Y. Using a second-hand ladder accounted for a majority of the savings in price.

“We looked at a number of other vendors and options, and, of course, with the economy the way it is, we’re always trying to go as economical as we can,” town Fire Marshal Jerry Wagner said. “That played a big role in the direction that we did go with this one. … It was a saving of somewhere around $250,000 by doing it the way we did. And it still had all the warranties and everything that you would get with a new one.”

The new ladder truck’s price tag totals less than similar equipment purchased recently by neighboring departments. Cabe said that the Carrboro Fire Department bought one three years ago—a different design but with essentially the same function—that cost about $918,000. Chapel Hill Fire Department in 2007 bought an aerial totaling around $810,000.

In addition to suggesting a used ladder, Orange Rural haggled extensively to get the deal they did.

“We kind of went back and forth,” Cabe said. “The original price they gave me on the truck was over $800,000, and we started negotiating and wiggling—we don’t need that; that’s ridiculous, take that off. We finally got it down. … When you don’t have a lot of money, you do what you have to do.”

Ground ladders and basic equipment came with the vehicle, but Orange Rural Fire Department will still have to stock it with extra hoses, nozzles, air packs, prying tools, scene lights and two-way radios. Those tools will cost about $58,000.

Some of the funds to pay for the truck will come from Waterstone development—about $600,000 in capital contributions—since the larger, taller buildings planned for the new development, such as UNC Hospitals Hillsborough campus, played into the department’s need for a taller ladder. The higher reach will allow firefighters to spray water onto blazes from above, ensuring more water reaches the fire’s center. It will also enable the department to better serve Durham Technical Community College’s Orange County Campus, where the building’s surroundings leave the second story out of the reach of a smaller ladder.

Waterstone’s contributions are wrapped up in the town’s approval for the project and will help pay for the development’s impact on fire protection.

But taller buildings rank as only one of the motivators for the larger truck. The new aerial not only has a longer ladder than the department’s previous vehicle—which stretched just 75 feet—it also boasts a ladder platform, enabling firefighters to stand on the ladder as opposed to having to lock onto the building with belts.

“We still use ladder belts in this one, but they’re not relying on it to keep them on the ladder or anything,” Wagner said. “The motivation in getting a new truck, of course, was the projected growth prior to the downfall of the economy with the hospital and all coming. … And then the platform was an added safety feature for the firefighters.”

Orange Rural’s previous aerial is also 24 years old, approaching the 25-year average lifespan of ladder trucks. With a vehicle that old, the department has struggled to find replacement parts. Firefighters have had to modify a few things to successfully make repairs, including the latch on the door, various bolts and mounting hardware.

“The last probably five years, the stuff that’s going wrong with it that we’ve had to repair we’ve had to buy parts from who we could find and kind of modify it,” Cabe said. “It’s from ’87; it’s had a lot of use. We’ve got full use out of that truck, and now getting parts, getting it repaired, keeping it in service has become more of a troublesome problem than it should be. We’re putting people’s lives in those things; 75 feet up probably wouldn’t kill you if you fell, but it’d hurt.”

Given the importance fire departments place in all their equipment, Orange Rural did its homework when searching for a new aerial. Constructed by Sutphen Corp.—a family-owned business that has sold trucks to other area departments, such as Durham and Winston-Salem—the vehicle has high credibility, Wagner said.

“We looked for a dependable truck,” he said. “We looked at a truck that’s got a well-known reputation in the area. And then we started talking to the manufacturer. They are a really high-end truck.”

Unlike some standard ladder vehicles, Orange Rural’s new aerial is constructed of aluminum as opposed to stainless steel, allowing the vehicle to weigh in at about 68,000 pounds instead of Chapel Hill’s ladder truck, which dresses out at 78,000 pounds.

“We’re saving, depending on how we equip it, 10-to-15,000 pounds,” Cabe said. “That takes that off the suspension of the tires, the wheels, the streets, the parking lot.”

Cabe said companies that sell only steel trucks maintain that aluminum doesn’t stand up as well under high temperatures; whereas steel disperses heat and can take a lot of abuse before it breaks, aluminum generally cannot.

“The manufacturer told us—and I don’t know how true it is; I just have to go by what they told us—but this is an aluminum alloy that has some kind of product mixed into it that helps it dissipate heat,” Cabe said. “It’s supposed to have a lot of the heat-dispersion characteristics of steel but still be light like aluminum.”

Town officials—like the firefighters—also seemed unable to keep the smiles from their faces at the prospect of all the new truck could do for Hillsborough and the surrounding county. Board member Evelyn Lloyd hugged each firefighter in turn while Mayor Tom Stevens and board members Mike Gering and Brian Lowen enthusiastically shook hands. After officially turning over the keys, Stevens expressed his gratitude to the fire department as a whole and congratulations for the acquisition.

“Now we have the keys,” he said. “We’re delighted that we finally have this cool piece of equipment that you can continue to do your job.”