By Riley Bunch
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — A startling audit found that one-third of Atlanta’s fire trucks are well beyond their life span. Now, the city is laying out its plan to bolster the fleet and remedy constant maintenance issues.
Department of Public Works Interim Commissioner Kentorri Garmon said that the problems with Atlanta’s fire fleet are nothing new. The department oversees fleet services which includes making repairs and issuing new orders.
“The challenges that we’ve noted here today are not unknown to us,” he told council members last week. “And there have been some challenges that have been around for a while.”
The city’s replacement plan starts with shoring up the reserve vehicles and ramping up ordering. Atlanta is currently waiting on 15 vehicles including eight engines, according to the fire department. The replacement plan calls for another 10 to be ordered next fiscal year.
“That is the initial strategy behind our development of our current fleet replacement plan addressing the reserves,” Fire Chief Rod Smith said. “(We realize) the significance of having reserves to put our people in while repairs are going on because trucks will breakdown on a regular basis.”
Smith also offered a number of other potential solutions — from more rapid response units to electric fire trucks.
“You will see additional rapid response units those will be small pickup trucks that are staffed with paramedics or EMTs responding throughout the city to assist in reducing the call volume for our engines and ladders,” he said.
The AJC previously reported that the Atlanta Fire Foundation raised funds to purchase an electric fire engine — the first of its kind on the East Coast.
It’s not the only instance where public safety leaders are leveraging technology to assist response on the ground. Smith said that the fire department along with the city’s law enforcement officials are looking to establish a new drone unit that would give first responders a vertical vantage point to assess emergencies.
Every year the Atlanta Regional Commission visits another metro area in the country to network with leaders and gather new policy ideas. Last week, more than 100 Atlanta delegates descended on New York City to learn about how its elected officials are tackling key issues from affordable housing to climate change.
For the first time in history, Atlanta’s mayor holds the position of board chair for the commission — a key planning agency responsible for spearheading development for the 11 counties in the metro area. The first-term mayor stresses the role of Georgia’s capital city plans in regional development.
While in New York, the Atlanta delegation met with public and private sector leaders to see how the city is addressing transit, housing, green energy and redevelopment.
“New York City provides a ready-made laboratory for Atlanta leaders to explore world-class innovations as well as major challenges facing both of our regions, from housing affordability to climate mitigation,” Anna Roach, ARC Executive Director & CEO, said in a statement about the trip.
The commission points to how the northern state was able to bounce back from Hurricane Sandy — mitigating the impacts of extreme weather changes on its coastal populations — as a model for climate resiliency.
The trip also highlighted ambitious redevelopment projects like Hudson Yards on the west side of Manhattan and Times Square as an ever-evolving tourism hot spot.
While Dickens’ administration has a lofty goal of creating or preserving 20,000 units of affordable housing by 2030, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has his sights set much higher by striving to build 500,000 new homes by 2032.
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