A harrowing mishap for one local company offered Elon’s fire department a golden opportunity to showcase a new multimillion-dollar vehicle that joined the town’s motor fleet earlier this year.
The fire department ultimately tested the mettle of this $2 million ladder truck on Thursday after an area tree service lost control of a truck-mounted crane that it had trundled in for a job along the 300 block of West Lebanon Avenue.
Landon Massey, the town’s fire chief, recalled that the situation was a bit touch and go when this ungainly set-up capsized near some overhead utility lines just off the roadway.
“The crane had over-extended its boom and it tipped over,” Massey recounted during a town council meeting on Tuesday, “and it was too dangerous to have a towing company come in with a bucket truck and rig it from the below.”
Massey said that the fire department was able to rush to the rescue with its new ladder truck, which allowed towing cables to be attached to the crane from above – well clear of the utility lines. He went on to note that one of the town’s firefighters belayed down from the extended ladder in order to fasten the cables to this piece of heavy equipment.
“We thought it would take about half an hour of work,” the fire chief added, “and about seven hours later, it actually came down.”
In the end, this innovative use of the department’s rolling stock offered a sense of vindication to councilmember Stephanie Bourland, who recalled the heat that she and her colleagues received after their $2 million outlay on the new ladder truck.
“We spent a lot of money on that truck,” she added during Tuesday’s proceedings, “and people were asking ‘what did we get for that money? Now we’ve seen [it rectify] something that could’ve been a lot more costly if we didn’t have good training and good equipment at the fire department.”
