Most fire departments in the state don’t do a lot of work on the water — but those on the Mississippi River are the exception.
Davenport Fire Chief Mike Carlsten says they’ve won a FEMA grant to help build a new updated boat to help them provide better water service. “What’s gonna be different about this boat is we’re looking to spec out a boat, that’s going to be more multipurpose, that we can actually operate in different scenarios, whether it’s a law enforcement type event, or whether it’s a hazardous material type event,” Carlsten says, “things that we can make this boat more multipurpose that not only serve the needs of the fire department, but also emergency services throughout the area.”
He says the new boat will be better suited to the various calls they get on the river. “Our current boat is a jet propulsion boat. So we have one motor that acts as our fire pump, and also acts as the propulsion to move the boat,” he says. “We’re looking to have a different boat that would actually separate that. So we would have a separate fire pump, from the actual outboard motors, what that would do is that would actually make that more maneuverable on moving water, like the river.” He says the new boat would be much quieter and have an enclosed cockpit that keeps firefighters and any patients they transport out of the elements. And it allow them to handle hazardous material situations and very smoky fires.
“Not worrying about having a that product coming into the responders. It is designed to actually seal the area and also pressurize it so that the responders are always operating in a good atmosphere,” he says. The FEMA port security grant is for $600,000 and the city is contributing $200,000. Carlsten says barge traffic has been a constant on the river and recreational boating is heavy during the summer season.
There have are more cruise boats up and down the river carrying hundreds of passengers and they have to be prepared to respond to any emergency they might have. “But also as we keep bringing more and more hazardous materials up and down either the waterway or the rail line that runs parallel to the waterway, there’s a greater potential of a possible hazardous material event too,” Carlsten says. He says they are in the design phase for the boat now and have three years to use the funding to get the boat built and in the water.