New London — The New London Fire Department has a new truck. Again. It turns out the truck purchased by the department in 2019 was a $1.265 million lemon that has given department personnel headaches ...
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Glad to see Pierce stand behind its product. Newport News has gotten a few lemons from Pierce, but none as bad as the two Bluefield ALF pumpers they got in the early 90's. At one time, NNFD was all ALF; now it's all Pierce.
Thank you Ray for providing us with this story.
I am very familiar with the New London, Ct Fire Dept and several of it's members.
The City of New London is about halfway between NYC and Boston and has a population of only about 27,000 packed into about only about 4 sq miles. Yet, it's department and members are very busy.
For such a small city, the very busy I-95 crosses through that city. It has both passenger and freight railroad traffic. It also serves many major bus companies at it's bus and rail transportation building. The city has a large waterfront on Long Island Sound, having a shipping port and ferry transportation to Long Island.
It is the home of Ocean Beach, a very popular summer spot for beach goers. It also has two colleges and it is home to the US Coast Guard Academy.
They operate out of three firehouses including three engines, one ladder, two ambulances, and one battalion chief as the shift commander. The manning is 2 firefighters and a Lt on each engine, with three firefighters assigned to the ladder truck. Two EMTs (BLS) on the ambulances. They are served by a private paramedic service from the local hospital.
The department is led by an Excellent Chief of Department, Tom Cursio, who I had the pleasure of meeting a long time ago when he was still a Probie Firefighter. I met him at one of the local fire schools that he was attending and it was easy to see that he was into the job and had the potential of rising through the ranks. It was through his continued efforts that the department received this new truck to replace the other they had purchased, which they had several problems with.
The New London Fire Dept is another department that a few members from this site had visited about three years ago.
