By Andrew Wellner
Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)
Copyright 2006 Anchorage Daily News
All Rights Reserved
WASILLA, Alaska — A shiny new truck, taller than most fire trucks and equipped as a mobile command post, has finally arrived in the Valley.
Central Mat-Su Fire Chief Jack Krill said the idea of acquiring the $410,000 mobile command and dispatch center originated as the brainchild of former Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon around the time the Wasilla police were building the Mat-Com dispatch center. The project was bequeathed to Krill when he took over as chief.
“It’s been almost a three-year project for me in itself,” Krill said.
He’s glad the truck is here and glad to be done working to get it built.
Now if they could only find a place to put it.
Dennis Brodigan, director of emergency services for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, said the truck is based at Fire Station 6-5 on Seward Meridian Parkway until more permanent housing can be found.
“We hope to find it other quarters eventually but this is centrally located and would be a good home for it now,” Brodigan said.
Krill said finding the truck a home could be tough. The borough fire stations are crowded. And the truck is more than 13 feet tall. It must be housed in a garage with a 14-foot door, something only certain borough fire stations have.
Paid for with a 2003 Homeland Security grant, the truck came with televisions and LCD screens and a roof-mounted swiveling camera to get pictures of a disaster scene, Brodigan said. It’s got a projector screen and conference room. It can be used for any incident that requires a command team or as a backup in case the Valley’s two dispatch centers go down simultaneously.
Emergency services will be working in the next few months using part of this year’s Homeland Security grant to outfit the truck with two dispatch centers, one compatible with Palmer police dispatch and one with Mat-Com, Krill said. They also have to wire it with radios compatible with the borough system.
And then they need to stock it with office equipment, maps and documents necessary for running a command post. By the first of next year though, Brodigan said, the truck should be fully outfitted.
Brodigan said any emergency service or police department dealing with a major incident would have the truck at its disposal.
It would have been useful during a four-car pileup this year on the Knik River bridge, Brodigan said. Though a relatively small incident, the accident response needed coordination among law enforcement, rescuers and firefighters.
On the other end of the spectrum is a wildfire of the magnitude of the Big Lake fire 10 years ago. The truck could serve as a scaled-down version of the borough emergency operations center, only closer to the scene.
The truck could even see action at the Alaska State Fair, either as a command post or as an exhibit, Brodigan said.
He said the truck was about six months late since they’d asked for a four-wheel drive chassis.
The manufacturer doesn’t make a lot of four-wheel drive trucks but, “we thought four-wheel drive would be very prudent up here,” Brodigan said.
It has an incinerator toilet and the sink works with removable bottles -- drinking water bottles feed the spigots and the sink drains into wastewater bottles.
And it’s outfitted for all kinds of weather.
Krill said he spent a lot of time when he visited the plant where the truck was to be built making sure the thing would work well in the winter.
“It had three air conditioners. We deleted one, added a heater,” Krill said.