Turlock City Fire welcomes new recruits, awaits new engines

The Turlock City Fire Department has four new firefighters on board and a second new fire engine on order.

Firefighters Cody Gold, Scott Sousa, Corey Thibault and Rick Koperski took up their engine duties mid-May after graduating from a six week in-house fire academy.

With the additions, the department now has 43 line personnel manning its four stations. Chief officers, a fire marshal, two office assistants and neighborhood services technicians bring the division to a staff of 52.

Testing and interviews happened last week to fill an operations chief position empty since the recession, said Chief Bob Talloni.

The duties of the operations chief include dealing with the downtime of an older engine, in addition to the department’s newest firetruck, bought in 2008, which Capt. Mike Harcksen described as a lemon engine. Firetrucks are not covered by the lemon law. “It’s been out of service a lot of time and it’s also started to develop reservations in the crews (to using it), and it’s actually left crews stranded while responding Code 3 to multiple (medical) calls and fire calls,” Harcksen told the Turlock City Council on May 10.

The fire engine, stationed at firehouse No. 2 serving the industrial area of southwest Turlock, has been out of service up to 79 days in one year, said Harcksen and Capt. David Mallory.

The council approved spending $500,158 from the city’s vehicle replacement fund to trade in the faulty engine to buy a new Rosenbauer fire engine. The new one should arrive in November, Talloni said, along with a custom-designed fire engine the department had long saved to buy as a replacement for a 1999 engine.

Both engines are made with parts that can be found at standard truck parts outlets instead of needing each piece to be special ordered from the manufacturer, Harcksen said, which adds $1,200 in freight costs for speedy delivery if more than one engine is down.

At one point in May, the department had so many vehicles out of service it had to press its ladder truck into first-in duty, Talloni said. The ungainly vehicle is meant for multistory access and overhead deluge through its ladder-mounted nozzle. It does not carry the rescue equipment or initial water supply of a normal fire engine.

The ladder truck is no longer routinely staffed, another casualty of recessionary cuts. Talloni said he is looking into getting a two-year federal grant to fill that void. But, he added, it depends on finding an ongoing $1.6 million in the budget to keep the firefighters after the grant ends.

“I’m not going to do it if I can’t find it in the budget. I’m not going to lay off firefighters,” Talloni said.

This story was originally published May 27, 2016 at 7:24 PM with the headline "Turlock City Fire welcomes new recruits, awaits new engines."