Excerpts from the news-gazette.com:
As the Champaign Fire Department gets ready to push-in its new ladder truck, Chief Gary Ludwig and Lt. Brian Ball provided a quick look at what firefighters now have at their disposal. At noon Saturday, the new truck will be wetted down, dried, and introduced to its new home at Station 4 on John Street.
The 107-foot 2018 Ferrara aerial ladder truck has a front bumper housing 100-foot hydraulic reels with hydraulic rescue tools to cut through a steering wheel, pop a door open, or split a car roof. And with four high-powered LED floodlights, a midnight interstate wreck can be illuminated as in broad daylight.
From the very beginning, Ludwig said firefighters should be the ones designing it for their needs. A committee of Champaign firefighters worked over a year with Holden, La.-based Ferrara Fire Apparatus to build a truck that matched the department’s needs. It was the committee that recommended adding the LED floodlights.
The $1.1 million truck has a pump and a 300-gallon booster tank.
