Another Lake County (Division 4) department has been added to the site. The Lake Villa Fire Department/Lake Villa Fire District/Lake Villa Rescue Squad is an interesting marriage of resources and organizations. Together, they currently occupy three fire stations in Lake Villa and Lindenhurst. The downtown station and most of the apparatus assigned there is owned by the Lake Villa Fire Department which is a private organization. They do their own fundraising in addition to being paid for contract services from the Lake Villa Fire District. The other two stations and the fire vehicles in them are owned by the Lake Villa Fire District. The ambulances in all three stations which are white and blue, are owned and staffed by the Lake Villa Rescue Squad.
The Lake Villa Fire Department station which has been expanded three times since the original building was constructed. Photo by Hank Sajovic
The Lake Villa Fire Department station in downtown Lake Villa is an interesting building which has had three separate additions built over the years. The building now has eight bays. Each two bay addition has an engraved stone with the year of that particular addition.
All of the fire suppression equipment with the exception of a 1973 CF-Mack/Welch was made by Pierce. This includes four engines, a pumper/squad, a 105′ ladder, and two tankers of which all but one are on Dash chassis. The newest piece is a 2009, Arrow XT engine at station 1.
The rescue squad currently has five Ford/Osage Type III ambulances which are painted in the traditional rescue squad color scheme of blue and white. As mentioned in a previous post HERE, there are two new ambulances on order and they will be red, and lettered for the Lake Villa Fire District as are the current units.
The Mack/Pierce engine shortly after it was purchased. It was Engine 2420 at the time, was purchased by the FIre Department and did not have the Wil-Burt Nightscan mounted on the roof. Lake Villa had been a Mack customer for many years. When Mack stopped building fire trucks, many of its customers continued to buy the CF chassis with other companies completing the unit. Lake Villa's transition to Pierce began with this unit. By the time they were ready to purchase their next vehicle, Mack was no longer offering the CF chassis. Photo by Larry Shapiro
This engine from Annandale, NJ is an example of a four-door fabricated by Mack. The rear doors are recessed, flat, and cover the step. The engine was originally built in 1981 and was updated and refurbished in 1996 by The Swab Wagon Company. Larry Shapiro photo
There are three rather uniquely interesting units on the roster in Lake Villa. One is a 1933 Pirsch antique that’s in great shape. The other two units are a throw back to a time when all of the Lake Villa engines were built by Mack on CF chassis. They have a 1973 CF-Mack that was refurbished with a new body complete with high-side compartments by Welch, and the other is a 1989/1990 CF-Mack/Pierce combination. One trait which makes this unit especially nice is the four-door conversion which was fabricated by Pierce. When Mack enclosed the CF cab with four doors, the rear doors were flat, straight, and set in from the contour of the body by several inches. Pierce fabricated the enclosure using a set of front doors for the rear of the cab which kept the same contours and body lines of the cab from the front to the rear.
This is one of the CF Mack engines that preceded the Pierce units in Lake Villa. Engine 621 as shown here was built in 1969 and carried 750 gallons of water with a 1,000-GPM pump. Larry Shapiro photo
