(city of Brooks/Facebook)

By Tiffany Goodwein

Smile Sunday

Brooks vintage fire truck to serve community in Mexico

Jul 19, 2020 | 9:38 AM

A decommissioned vintage 1993 Volvo fire truck from Brooks will be serving a new purpose by helping a community in Mexico.

The truck was donated to the Los Amigos project, an initiative spearheaded by the Rotary Club of Lethbridge Sunrise and is supported by Rotary Clubs throughout Southern Alberta.

“It started about ten years ago, the Rotary club in Lethbridge, Lethbridge Sunrise Rotary club started gathering, I guess, municipal equipment, fire trucks and handi-busses ambulances, school buses, things like that and started taking them to Mexico,” Calvin Sturgeon, of the Brooks Rotary Sunrise Club said.

The retired emergency support vehicles will be used to help smaller Mexican communities enhance their emergency response centres.

“There are many communities around that don’t have vehicles of any kind, let alone anything of the quality of used vehicles from up here,” Sturgeon said.

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Last year, the organization took a fire truck down from Langdon to serve a community in Mexico with a population of around 10,000.

“ It had never had a fire truck before, it had never had a fire hall, it never had a fire chief, so all of this came about because the Rotary Clubs down there identified it as a community that needed those resources.” Sturgeon said.

Communities that receive a vehicle create the infrastructure to support it, according to Sturgeon and demonstrate that they have the ability to maintain the vehicle for years to come.

About 80 donated vehicles have been sent down in their nine years of operations. An audit of the vehicles, according to Sturgeon found that 79 of those vehicles are still in service in their communities.

Delivery of the service vehicles from Canada takes approximately one week, with the Rotarians driving off in October.

Due to COVID-19, the vintage fire truck will remain parked for the coming year, but the Rotary Club hopes to deliver it to a community in need in 2021.