Talk about two birds, one stone.
A Burnaby firefighter has found a way to extend the lives of fire trucks no longer in service and help firefighters in Central America.
Prompted by a persistent Capt. Erik Vogel, the Burnaby Fire Department approached the City of Burnaby earlier this year about participating in an initiative founded by a retired teacher in Kamloops and quickly adopted by the local firefighters.
Among other relief work, Operation Nicaragua takes old equipment from fire departments across the province and ships it south to the Central American country.
Burnaby has donated other items in the past, including 2,000 feet of hose and gear no longer used by the department, but this is the first time it has ever donated a fire truck.
“This is just going to be perfect for them,” Vogel said.
The truck the city is sending to Nicaragua is too old for Burnaby, but Vogel said its lack of new technology and gadgets is perfect for the small, rural departments that can be found in Nicaragua.
And if the truck hadn’t been donated, its outcome would have been much more grim.
“You’ll see this truck end up in a landfill or scrapped or someone will make a flat deck out of it. You see the old trucks all over,” he said. “This way it can be a whole new life and they can get another 20 years out of this thing, easily.”
The truck will now head up to Kamloops for a few months, where it will be fitted with other equipment bound for Nicaragua and driven back to the Lower Mainland. From here, it will be shipped south on a freighter.
“They just chain the thing to the top of the deck, but it takes two months at least to get down there, and then it has to go to another Central American country and then it gets put on a truck and driven to Nicaragua,” he said. “So it’s quite a process.”
When the trucks and equipment bound for Nicaragua finally arrive, a group of firefighters and volunteers from B.C. fly down to meet with local firefighters and distribute the donations, Vogel explained.
Vogel has gone twice already to volunteer with the program, and he’s hoping he’ll get to go a third time, when the Burnaby fire truck, destined for the Corn Islands off the east cost of Nicaragua, finally arrives.
“It’s amazing. They’re so excited,” he said. “We donate our uniforms as well, and they’ll keep our (Burnaby) patch on and they’ll put their own Nicaraguan patch underneath it.”
