After 30 years of fighting flames in Swanzey, the 1975 Ford fire truck is about to begin a new life in Ecuador.
Selectmen voted this week to donate the truck to Mutual Aid, a nonprofit organization that collects fire equipment and ships it to firefighters in South America. The truck will go to Guayaquil, Ecuador, where many firefighters wear T-shirts and bandanas instead of turnout coats and air masks while battling flames.
The truck will go to Guayaquil, a city of 3.5 million. There are about 250 full-time firefighters there, with about 650 volunteers. The overall fire budget is about $3 million per year. Full-timers regularly work 24-hour shifts and make about $120 per month, or 33 cents per hour.
``They basically have nothing, and they'll take the trucks ... and strip them right down and refurbish them,'' said Swanzey Fire Chief Sylvester R. Karasinski. Firefighters there lack the basic equipment needed, he said.
``Civilians are dying in fires, which would be easily handled by two or three fire companies in the United States,'' he said.
The donation program was started by New York firefighter Daniel Sheridan right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Francis Faulkner, the chairman of the board of selectmen, said this isn't the first time an old truck has found new life in a foreign land. One of the department's trucks was sent to Jamaica.
