SPFD newest engine arrives but being fine-tuned before duty

The city’s newest fire engine arrived May 8 and was carefully backed into Station 1 on South 10th Street…it was a tight squeeze for a piece of equipment that arrived just in the nick of time.

But now the engine is undergoing some fine-tuning before it’s returned to the station and put into duty.

The Pierce Arrow engine had been on order for a year but was especially needed since the November 2014 Santa Clara Waste Water explosion when the Santa Paula Fire Department lost an engine.

The arrival of the new engine with an American flag grill was a happy occasion for the battered SPFD, which is awaiting the return to duty of three firefighters that were injured in the incident that involved toxic chemicals. A city mechanic that works on fire apparatus also suffered from suspected toxic exposure when he later examined the engine at the site of the explosions and fire.

The new engine was approved by the then-City Council in May 2014, after an at times sharp discussion on its use and public perception of fire duties.

Once the $530,000 expenditure was approved manufacturing began at the Pierce Manufacturing plant in Appleton, Wisconsin, a process that included onsite inspections by members of the SPFD including Captains Jerry Byrum and Austin Macias and Jose Arreola, a city mechanic; the captains also started to learn some of the basics of operating the new engine, the largest ever owned by the SPFD.