Training complete on new fire engine

Six months after Holton’s volunteer fire department welcomed its new “first-out” fire engine, Holton Fire Chief Scott Baum says the city’s firefighting crew has been fully trained on it and it is ready for service.

“We’ve spent a lot of time training on it,” Baum said after the new fire engine, with a 109-foot aerial ladder, was officially placed into service last Friday. “We’ll be able to run the truck efficiently and properly, with no problems.”

Baum was also happy to report that Holton Rural Fire District No. 4 is also in possession of a new, 2,000-gallon pumper tanker, which was also recently put into service and will greatly improve firefighting capabilities in the eastern part of the county.

“It’ll cover our district, and it can provide mutual aid to Mayetta and Whiting as well as into Atchison County and Jefferson County,” he said. “A lot of people don’t realize that our district actually goes east of the Delaware River. The boundaries don’t just stop at the Jackson-Atchison county line — we go on east another two miles.”

The two recent acquisitions are part of a spate of improvements that the fire department and the Public Safety Building in Holton, which houses Holton’s fire and police departments, are seeing this year. New see-through doors have been installed on the three fire engine bays at the Public Safety Building facing Fourth Street, and the building is due for a new paint job sometime this year.

Holton’s new aerial fire engine, which arrived in January, was obtained at a cost of $970,595, with about $455,000 of the purchase covered by a Kansas Department of Commerce Community Development Block Grant and the rest covered by Holton city tax funds. It replaced an aerial fire engine with a 65-foot ladder that had been in place since 1999.

“Anything that’s past 20 or 25 years old cannot be your first-out truck. It has to be replaced or it’s going to affect your insurance ratings,” said Baum, referring to National Fire Protection Association regulations that govern fire insurance rates for home and property owners in a community served by a fire department.

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