The City of North Bricksfield Fire Department has officially reorganized Squad 2. Squad 2 was disbanded in 1996 when funding for a fully functioning squad was not available. Squad 2 will be in Station 23 at the east end of the city.

 

The City of North Bricksfield Fire Department has announced the dedication of a new pier and a Marine Unit to fill it. The pier has been dedicated to Christian Engeldrum, an FDNY firefighter and Sgt. in the U.S. Army that was killed recently while in Iraq. The new Marine Unit will be known as Marine 4 but is named "The Engeldrum."

 

The City of North Bricksfield Fire Department has announced the opening of their new Station 19 as well as the dedication of Rescue 3 for the station. The new station will house Rescue 3 only but there is a second bay that may be filled later by a Special Operations unit or possibly another Tactical Rescue.

 

The City of North Bricksfield Fire Department has updated all of the department apparatus to LED lighting compliant with NFPA standards. Every department vehicle now is equipped with LED lights. The change cost the department an undisclosed amount of money and was performed by Brickara Emergency Vehicles.

 

The City has received their new Thawing Unit. The units is a Reading Box on a Ford F-550 Chassis. The unit is capable of rapidly thawing hydrants, couplings, hoses, nozzles, and gear. After several fires last year over the winter, the department ordered the rig.

 

The City of North Bricksfield Fire Department has received their new Collapse Rescue. The old one was destroyed at Box 4247 on January 21st, 2004 while operating at a partial structural collapse. While operating, the remainder of the building fell destroying the Collapse Rescue. No firefighters were injured at the collapse but 1 person trapped by the initial collapse died. The new unit will be in service immediately. It will be kept with Rescue 2 and cross-staffed by Rescue 2 firefighters.

 

On Sunday, October 4th, The City of North Bricksfield Fire Department Commissioner Francis Mandrake announced that the city's new radio service is in full operating order. The new computerized system was installed on a grant from the Department of Homeland Defense. Every firefighter is assigned a radio at beginning of shift that corresponds to what position they ride on each rig. The rig supervisor is responsible for entering the names of those firefighters into the citywide radio database. Everytime a radio is queued up, the dispatcher and all the command rigs on the scene can find out what radio it was and, in turn, find out what firefighter it was. Every rig in the city had their onboard laptops upgraded to all them to see all of the radio tranmissions. The radios in all of the vehicles have also been updated for this purpose. The vehicles have also had a GPS antenna added to allow the dispatcher to see where the vehicles are. For example, if Engine 10 is going to the training center and are only 2 blocks away from a call in the area of Headquarters, Engine 10 will respond first due rather than Engine 4 or 7. The new system is expected to minimize already low response times. 

 

The City of North Bricksfield Fire Department received a new unit paid for by independent insurance companies. It will be staffed between 6pm and 6am by Firefighters trained by the FDNB but paid for by the insurance companies. The new unit will give firefighters an opportunity to work extra jobs for extra cash. No additional firefighters will be hired to staff this new unit. It is a 2004 Ferrara Custom Body on a GMC Chassis.

 

The City's new SCUBA Service Unit is now in service. It will be at Station 2 on the river front. It is not manned full-time but it will be manned by Engine crew.

 

The City's 6 new FireMedics (seen below this story) are now up and operational. The city will operate these 6 ALS Medium Duty Ambulances for the next few months to decide whether or not to take over the private ambulance companies and operate NBFD Ambulances. One FireMedic will be operating out of Headquarters, one out of Station 4, one out of Station 5, one out of Station 11, one out of Station 16, and one out of the Fire Training Center.  

 

The City of North Bricksfield's first of ten new Freightliner/Wheeled Coach FireMedic Ambulance has been added to the site. The city will run 10 as a trial to possibly combine the Fire and EMS services of the city.