Escambia County Fire Rescue invites the public to join in celebrating the arrival of the new Squad 3 Apparatus at a push-in ceremony Saturday, June 8 at 11 a.m. at ECFR Station 3, 5925 N. W St. This brand new apparatus is built to facilitate ECFR'S Special Operations response and fire suppression operations throughout Escambia County, along with operations across the region as needed.
At the ceremony, Station 3 firefighters will continue the longstanding fire service tradition of pushing the apparatus into the station bay, commemorating the arrival of a new apparatus into service. Pastor Gordon Godfrey of Marcus Pointe Baptist Church will provide the invocation, and the McGuire's Pipe Band will lead a short procession behind the ECFR Honor Guard.
Squad 3 is a brand new Pierce PUC built in Appleton, Wisconsin. Along with a four-person crew, it will carry equipment needed to facilitate heavy rescue, extrication, entrapment, medical, high/low angle and fire suppression emergencies.
Squad 3 will replace an ECFR engine and rescue apparatus that both responded to a charter bus crash in March 2018 on Interstate 10, which involved a bus falling into a 50-foot ravine while transporting high school students. The crew used rope rescue techniques to evacuate several seriously injured students from the ravine and provided extrication expertise to rescue and remove trapped victims from the wreckage. This Technical Rescue Team is the only one of its sort between Mobile, Alabama and Tallahassee, Florida.
The old engine and rescue apparatus will be placed into reserve status to be utilized when front line equipment is down for maintenance or repairs.
This apparatus, along with the advanced level of training of the firefighters assigned to Special Operations, will help Escambia County Fire Rescue continue to provide a high level of emergency services to the citizens of Escambia County.
