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The Austintown-based Mission of Love facilitated the exchange
LORDSTOWN
An out-of-service 1981 tanker/pumper firetruck the village of Lordstown could not give away locally is now protecting the Pine Ridge Native American reservation in South Dakota.
Without the firetruck, Pine Ridge residents often had to watch prairie grass and structure fires burn because the closest fire station was outside the reservation about 50 miles away.
Pine Ridge, located in the southwest corner of the state, is home to about 44,000 people who did not have a firetruck, never mind a fire department, until Lordstown’s Pierce-built firetruck arrived Tuesday.
The Austintown-based Mission of Love, through Kathleen Price, its founder and director, brought the two entities together.
In a letter thanking Price for the firetruck, Pine Ridge residents Rusty and Randy Puckett said that “many times, we lose homes and hay fields and grasslands that our cattle graze on and much, much more” because it can take up to an hour for firefighters to come from Pine Ridge, S.D.
“Now, with the help of this truck, we will be able to respond to a fire much quicker, and the outcome will be less devastating,” the Pucketts said.
In a telephone interview, Rusty Puckett, who runs a construction business, said the firetruck is located in “exact dead center” of the reservation where there is a school and housing for about 1,500 people. Puckett said they have about six volunteers lined up and hope to train them and others in the near future.
“We don’t have any money. We’re talking total volunteer,” he said.
“Our next step is to put up a fire station and get a couple of brush trucks, which are pickups with water tanks,” said Puckett.
At the Lordstown end, the village purchased a new tanker/pumper in 2014 and took the 1981 Pierce out of commission and advertised it for sale, but no bids were received. Then it was offered to local volunteer fire departments and then to area nonprofit organizations.
The only taker was Mission of Love, said Councilman-at-large Ron Radtka, who has volunteered for the Mission of Love in the past.
The only other option for getting rid of the tanker/pumper was to scrap it, but that would have netted only about $1,500, Radtka said.
“I went to the mayor and council about donating the truck, and they hated to see it scrapped. We thought donating it was a better use of the truck. It could save somebody’s life,” Radtka said.
The firetruck was transported to the Pine Ridge Reservation at cost by Transport National and arrived in time for the Wounded Knee Memorial, Price said.
Price said she has been part of the Oglala Lakota Nation for more than 20 years building homes, a hospice, a Lakota Language School, Jane Goodall’s offices, the Chamber of Commerce building and the Wounded Knee Community building with Mission of Love volunteers.
Many times while Mission of Love was on a building site, Price said she would receive a call from a friend whose home was on fire.
“By the time we would reach the fire, the home would be burned to the ground with only ashes remaining and lives broken because there were no firetrucks to respond to fires on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation,” she said.
She thanked Radtka and Lordstown Mayor Arno Hill and the village council members for allowing the donation of the firetruck to Pine Ridge, which she said will make a difference in the lives of the people there.