St. Pete Fire Rescue will get 3 new high-water rescue vehicles ahead of peak hurricane season
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - First responders rescued 430 people in St. Petersburg during Hurricane Helene.
"It was a constant state of readiness," St. Pete Fire Rescue Division Chief of Suppression Brett Ciskoski said. "Busy, thousands of calls for that week, which is probably six to eight times the number of incidents that we would normally run."
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They used SPFR’s high-water vehicle and vehicles SPFR borrowed from other city departments to evacuate the 430.
"Those were basically high-water dump trucks, but they allowed us to rescue people. It was just a little more challenging in putting them into service and then getting people into the bed of the vehicle," Ciskoski said.
Big picture view:
SPFR won’t have to worry about that anymore. The St. Petersburg City Council unanimously approved almost $300,000 for three more high-water vehicles for the department earlier this month. They initially were going to get one more, but city staff worked to budget more money, seeing the need. They’ve had the current one for more than 10 years, and it’s aging and needs frequent maintenance.
The new ones have several new features and technology. Two of the three vehicles will have fire pumps for firefighting, and all three will have protective covers and side lift gates to help people in wheelchairs and others who need assistance getting in the vehicle.
What they're saying:
"These vehicles, when you look at the lift gates, for instance, those old vehicles, you had elderly individuals you had to put into trucks," Vice Chair Lisset Hanewicz, who brought the item forward to the Council, said during the City Council meeting.
"Via a ladder," Ciskoski replied. "So, yes, this is a tremendous advancement for us."
"It’s a huge deal. And when you think about the firefighting pumps, and we saw those videos of areas that were flooded with homes that were burning in the floodwaters [during Hurricane Helene]," Hanewicz said.
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"This is going to allow us to get into areas of the city for evacuation and fire protection that we've never been able to get through during some of these storms," Ciskoski said.
Dig deeper:
The new vehicles will be stationed across the city, so all areas are covered not just in hurricanes, but in heavy rain and flooding events too, like last Sept. 3 and 4.
That’s when more than 50 vehicles were trapped in the water.
"We were chasing with the one high-water vehicle that we had all over the city to try and make sure that there were no citizens trapped," Ciskoski said.
"They’re going to save lives," Ciskoski said about the new vehicles. "That’s the bottom line."
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"Things of this nature, where we're adding equipment, adding technology … we're better capable of handling those situations. So, it's going to be a positive impact, not just for the citizens, but on the members of the department as well," he said.
What's next:
The new high-water vehicles have been ordered and will be here before peak hurricane season.
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