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By: Brendan McDonough

Reporter for North Tonawanda

This past week Fire Chief Joe Sikora told members of the Common Council some startling news about one member of his fleet. It turns out that one truck is unsafe to operate and repairs could be as much as $20,000.

“I have the money in my budget to get this repair done right now because it is the middle of the year,” said Sikora, “but what I don’t know is if I will still have it at the end of the year or if I will come up short.”

The truck is Engine 7 and was purchased in 2002 for more than $400,000. At issue is rusting where the aluminum cab meets the truck’s steel frame. The truck is housed at the fire station on Nash and Deerfield Drive and was taken out of service after it was deemed that it should not be on the road.

“This is a front-line pumper and we are running just shy of four thousand calls a year,” said Sikora. “All of our trucks are very busy and this is a need repair.”

Once the repair work is done Sikora says the truck should last another 10 years. Sikora says he has found a local company in North Tonawanda that can do the repair work and says the repair could take anywhere from three weeks to a month to complete.