TheBurg

16 | theburg | 04.16 G lick Fire Equipment Company occupies a hangar-like building in the middle of a field outside Lancaster, just up the road from Bird in Hand, Pa. Behind a red- and-white, split-faced block façade, a six-bay garage looks out on an asphalt strip running through the grass. is is the runway of the Smoketown Airport, which hosts daily aerial tours of Amish country and an annual small-plane enthusiasts' fly-in. On a rainy day in February, Harrisburg Fire Chief Brian Enterline made the hour's drive from the city to the Glick garage. Glick is a distributor for Pierce Manufacturing, a maker of customized fire trucks—what Faulkner is locally to automakers like Honda and Subaru. Enterline, accompanied by two city firemen, had come to pick up a new ladder truck, a mammoth, specialized piece of equipment costing close to a million dollars. By the chief 's reckoning, it would be the first truck with a 100-foot ladder the city had owned since 1981. More important, it was jointed in the middle, meaning it could cut tight turns in the city's narrow streets. e truck was waiting in the lot behind the garage, bright red beneath a gray sky. Enterline climbed up into the driver's seat, while one of the firefighters, Corey Stone, mounted a separate cab in the back. Stone was taking the tillerman's position, where he could control the truck's rear wheels. ey drove down the road to a nearby gas station. Speaking through a wireless headset, Stone told the chief that his seatbelt had been installed wrong. ey finished fueling, turned around and drove back to Glick, where they executed an impossible-looking U-turn in a narrow corner of the lot, the truck folding at the hinge. "at was sweet, Corey," said Enterline. "at was what she's all about right there." How did Harrisburg, so recently on the edge of bankruptcy, afford a brand- new, million-dollar fire truck? It didn't. Half the cost was paid with a grant from Dauphin County. e other half was paid by the Harrisburg Firemen's Relief Association, a fund financed through a state tax on insurance companies. Huge Relief as the number of volunteer firefighters in Harrisburg dwindled, a relief fund to benefit them grew and grew. What are they doing with all that money? by PAuL bArker

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