Thanks to a $1.4 million purchase funded by the municipality of Princeton and Princeton University, the town’s all-volunteer fire department will soon have a new ladder truck and a new engine truck to replace older vehicles that date to the 1980s and are being used “beyond safe and useful life,” according to a recent report made to Princeton Council by Princeton Fire Chief Dan Tomalin.

While Council has already approved the purchase of new equipment, to which the University is contributing $500,000, Mr. Tomalin’s August 24 power point presentation detailed specifics about the new trucks and the state of some of the old apparatus that is still in use. 

Despite several construction projects including high-occupancy dwellings that have increased density and population, the fire department is currently operating with 33 percent less fire apparatus than it had a decade ago. “In 2001, we had five engines. Now we have two,” Mr. Tomalin said.

There are times, when all four of the department’s trucks have already left the firehouse to respond to a fire, that some members of the department have to drive to the scene in their own vehicles. That makes it difficult “for commanders to maintain accountability, a key safety component, on scene,” Mr. Tomalin’s presentation reads. It also “causes delays and uncoordinated arrival of resources.”

The purchase of the new vehicles will not eliminate the situation of firefighters arriving at incidents in their own cars, but it will “reduce it by a great deal,” Mr. Tomalin told Council.

Asked by one Council member whether the town has been unsafe because of the state of its current firefighting equipment, Mr. Tomalin said, “Obviously, having all of your apparatus available to go on a call is safer than not having it. But our town is not unsafe. We have a mutual aid agreement with all of our surrounding towns.”

Councilwoman Heather Howard asked how the fire department coordinates with Princeton Fire and Rescue Squad (PFARS) in terms of equipment. Mr. Tomalin responded that while the two organizations do have some similar equipment, PFARS is strictly a rescue operation “so there isn’t much redundancy with them.”

The new apparatus “will return the Princeton Fire Department closer to historical levels and ensure adequate fire protection to our growing community,” Mr. Tomalin concluded in his presentation.