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After one of its engines rolled down a hill and smashed into a tree, half of the Ellsworth Fire Department’s fleet of firefighting vehicles are out of service.
The city’s fire department had arrived at a fire on Gary Moore Road when an unoccupied engine that had been parked rolled backward about 400 feet down the road, went off the pavement and smashed into a tree roughly 12 to 14 inches wide, Scott Guillerault, the city’s fire chief, said Thursday.
The truck was significantly damaged and likely will be out of service for several months, Guillerault said. Another engine the city owns also is out of service because of electrical issues, and a loaner engine the city has borrowed from a fire engine sales and service company cannot be used because the driver seat seatbelt isn’t working.
The seatbelt issue should be fixed by the middle of next week, but the department doesn’t know how long the two engine trucks that it owns will be unavailable, Guillerault said. The department’s insurance policy, through Maine Municipal Association, is paying for the loaner truck in the meantime, he said.
“This has not been a good month for us,” Guillerault said.
In the meantime, the department still can fight fires since its ladder truck, tanker truck and reserve engine all are working and available.
But it would be stretched thin equipment-wise if it had to respond to two different fires at the same time, he added. In that event, the city would depend on mutual-aid agreement with surrounding towns, which are aware of Ellsworth’s truck problems, he said.
The Nov. 12 crash in which the empty engine rolled down Gary Moore Road is believed to have been caused by a mechanical failure, not operator error, Guillerault said. The firefighter who had driven the truck to the scene had applied the parking brake and put a chock behind the front driver’s side wheel, which is the department’s protocol, before it began rolling backward and went over the chock, he said.
Greenwood Emergency Vehicles — the same company that loaned the department the engine that lacks a working seatbelt — is inspecting the wrecked engine to verify that cause at its Brunswick facility, Guillerault said. He does not anticipate finding fault with or taking any disciplinary action with the firefighter who drove it to the scene and parked it.
The fire chief said he thinks Greenwood will have to transport the truck to its larger facility in Massachusetts in order to fully repair it.
Guillaerault said he doesn’t yet have a dollar damage estimate for the truck from the company. Ellsworth’s police department, which sent an officer to the scene to document the accident, came up with an initial estimate of $10,000 damage to the truck, according to the accident report.
