Genoa Township Fire Department purchasing new extrication tools

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

We hope our fire­fight­ers only have to use vehi­cle extri­ca­tion tools in train­ing, but when they are needed in a real-life sit­u­a­tion we expect those tools to be the newest and best that are avail­able on the market.

That’s what Genoa Town­ship Fire Depart­ment Chief Gary Hon­ey­cutt asked for dur­ing the Thurs­day, August 2, Genoa Town­ship Board of Trustees meet­ing — newer equip­ment from one of the best man­u­fac­tur­ers in the industry.

“Our cur­rent extri­ca­tion equip­ment is 20 years old,” Chief Hon­ey­cutt said. “The tools do not con­form to the stan­dards they should, espe­cially with new mate­ri­als used in cars.”

Chief Hon­ey­cutt said his depart­ment demoed four dif­fer­ent brands of extri­ca­tion tools and decided to price a seven-tool set designed and man­u­fac­tured by Gen­e­sis Res­cue Systems.

“The seven tools would cost $28,095; we bud­geted $32,750,” Chief Hon­ey­cutt said. “Gen­e­sis tools are designed to be used on today’s cars; and Gen­e­sis is one of the lead­ers in the industry.”

Chief Hon­ey­cutt said the Gen­e­sis extri­ca­tion tools would be pur­chased from How­ell Res­cue Sys­tems in Ket­ter­ing, Ohio.

The trustees approved the pur­chase request. The older extri­ca­tion tools will be main­tained as a backup set on another depart­ment engine.

Chief Hon­ey­cutt also noted that dry weather and extreme heat could eas­ily lead to brush and grass fires. He cau­tioned town­ship res­i­dents to use care with out­door fires by using clean-burning wood and keep­ing flames at a two-foot height maximum.

For sum­mer gas grill safety tips go to the Genoa Town­ship web­site at < genoatwp.com >, click Fire at the top of the page, then click Fire Pre­ven­tion in the drop-down menu.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.