WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 2008 News WWW.KANSAN.COM THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
7
COMMUNITY
With vehicles aging, department adds new trucks
BY KRISTIN HOPPA
khoppa@kansan.com
Lawrence will add new fire trucks and a new rescue vehicle by 2009, and the new trucks won't cost Lawrence residents a thing.
City commissioners voted unanimously June 17, to grant the city approximately $1.2 million in general obligation bonds for the purchase of two new fire engines and one technical rescue vehicle. The city will not raise taxes to cover the cost of the new equipment.
Bradford said the equipment was costing the city thousands of dollars in maintenance repairs.
The decision came after Fire Chief Mark Bradford requested that the city replace aging equipment.
Bill Stark, Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Division chief.
said one current fire engine was used about 50 percent of the year and had more than 100,000 miles on it.
"We were concerned with the reliability of these trucks," Stark said.
In addition to the two fire trucks, a technical rescue vehicle will hit the streets for the first time in Lawrence. The vehicle will bring rescue equipment to emergencies.
The department had previously converted an old, retired fire truck into a rescue vehicle that carried water, trench and carry ropes for firefighters. The truck recently went under repair itself. Currently the city is using trailers to take rescue equipment to the scene.
"We still have stuff sitting on the floor in stations," Stark said. "It's not a good way to do business, and it puts our firefighters at risk."
Stark said he hoped to get the city
to approve a regular replacement schedule for fire equipment. City garbage trucks get replaced about every seven years and city police cars get replaced more frequently because of the number of miles put on the cars.
Lawrence-Douglas County Fire and Medical stations have no such schedule. Starks said he hoped to retire older trucks on a regular basis in the future.
Paperwork to complete the agreement is set to be signed within the next few months and within the next 270 days the new vehicles will be delivered.
"If we are going to do our job," Stark said, "then we are going to do it right."
Edited by Asher Fusco
IRAQ
Leader signs security agreement
BY QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD — Iraq's foreign minister said Tuesday that the country has little choice but to sign a new security agreement with the U.S. that would let American troops stay in the country after a U.N. mandate expires.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari recently returned to Iraq after meeting with President Bush in Washington to discuss the agreement, which has been criticized by many Iraqi officials worried it would leave too much power in U.S. hands.
But Zebari told parliament that the only other options were to extend the U.N. mandate that expires at the end of the year or continue without a formal agreement, neither of which holds much appeal to Iraqis.
He said an agreement would last one or two years and urged Iraqi officials to finalize it by the end of July.
Meanwhile, a truck bomb planted near the house of a Sunni sheik who had turned against al-Qaida killed one person and wounded 25 others near the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, said Brig. Khalid Abdul-Sattar, police spokesman in Niniveh province.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has launched operations against Shiite and Sunni militants in Baghdad and
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A man stands over the lifeless bodies of victims of violence at a hospital morgue in Baqouba, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad Tuesday. At least seven people lost their lives in separate acts of violence in Diyala Tuesday.
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A fire engine at the Lawrence-Douglas County Fire and Medical station shows the wear and tear from years of use. The city approved the purchase of two new fire engines last week to replace the aging equipment.
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