Old County firetrucks bound for Honduras and Mexico

They are too old to be used here, but two former County of Grande Prairie fire trucks will get new life in fire departments in Honduras and Mexico.

One of the 23-year-old machines has been given to the Sunrise Rotary Club to support its efforts to help a fire department in Roatan, Honduras.

The other went to the Swan City Rotary Club and its Highway to Mazatlán project.

Frank Havies with the Sunrise Club says they have been helping out the Honduran department for three years.

“Without these kinds of donations, these communities in third world countries and remote areas just don’t have the facilities to look after their citizens. They don’t have working fire equipment. The firefighters don’t have oxygen bottles at work. This equipment is bettering the community (for) the people that go there and the tourists that visit there.”

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A release announcing the donation says when the Sunrise club started its work in Roatan, the firefighters did not have boots, gloves, or helmets and the department did not have a working fire truck.

Havies adds this will be the second truck the club has donated.

“If we get the truck to Fort Lauderdale (Florida), they will actually get free shipping all the way to Roatan, then the Rotary Club turns it over to the fire department down there.”

Havies says the club has fundraising events for international projects like this one. The Rotary Club down there and local businesses also help out.

He adds they have two ambulances and a fire truck ready to go.

“That’s probably all the equipment they’ll need in the motorized vehicle section for a while, but they always need new masks, new balaclavas, gloves, even the basic equipment.”

The County says in that same release that the trucks had been decommissioned and no longer met safety standards in Canada, and had no resale value. They had been sitting in storage.