Volunteer fire dept. says farewell to old truck

LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) - Ron Blake turned the ignition, and the 62-year-old fire truck roared to life.

A gust of black smoke belched from its exhaust pipe, and the klaxon’s whine sounded out over the Laramie plains.

“See, it still works,” said Blake, proudly patting the 1952 GMC’s steering wheel. “It’s still functional for grass fires, but the young guys - they don’t want it anymore. They want the fast-attack.”

Blake is one of the Big Laramie Valley Volunteer Fire Department “originals.”

Along with Pat Parker, Gerald Ferguson, Gil Engen and others, Blake was in the first Big Laramie Valley volunteer crew - called the “Harmony group” at the time.

The rumbling truck in which he sat was also a member of the original crew. Blake affectionately refers to the truck as “The Beast.”

Big Laramie bought The Beast for $250 in 1972, he said, the year rural firefighters opened the Harmony station.

As the fleet’s first truck, The Beast earned the official title of BL-1.

After nearly 45 years of service, the truck is set for retirement this month.

The firefighters plan to display the truck for its final public appearance at their annual pancake supper fundraiser, scheduled for 3-7 p.m. Saturday at Harmony Elementary School, 20 Lewis Rd.

Blake said the event should be a fitting tribute for a truck that’s responded to hundreds of blazes in the county and mountain west, fighting fires from Squirrel Creek to Yellowstone National Park.

As he pulled out of the fire station’s lot Tuesday, taking the truck on a test run, Blake struggled with the steering wheel.

“It’s not power steering,” he said. “It’s arm-strong steering.”

He motored up onto a knoll behind Harmony school, overlooking the river valley, and idled BL-1 for a moment.

“We pulled up here one night, and the whole damn valley was on fire,” Blake said. “We went on down there and had a bunch of guys in the back, squirting water.

“But that’s not allowed anymore - you can’t be driving over a grass fire with guys in the back.”

In the early years, BL-1 often responded to grass fires alongside city of Laramie Fire Department firefighters, who manned Albany County trucks.

The two-wheel-drive county trucks would top off with water, pull into muddy grass fields and bog down, Blake said.

With its six-cylinder engine, a thick tow cable and six-wheel drive, BL-1 provided the muscle on those operations.

“The first four fires we went to, we pulled the city out,” Blake said.

Over the years, BL-1 was dispatched to the Three Sisters Fire, 1985, in Hot Springs, S.D.; Deadwood Reservoir Fire, 1986, Lowman, Idaho; Goldmine Fire, 1988, Big Horn Mountains; and the Clover Mist Fire, 1988, Yellowstone National Park, among many others.

For out-of-area dispatches, local agencies responsible for fighting fires paid an hourly rate for equipment use and manpower. In the course of its service, BL-1 brought in an estimated $80,000.

Although the truck is in working condition, Blake said it’s ready for replacement because parts no longer exist for repairs.

“It’s just as functional as it was, but it doesn’t have any chrome on it,” he joked.

The last time firefighters dispatched BL-1 was for the Squirrel Creek Fire in July 2012, which burned 10,921 acres on Sheep Mountain and surrounding areas.

The Beast parked outside someone’s cabin, waiting in case the fire came, but it never did, Blake said.

Of all the fires Blake responded to with BL-1, one in particular sticks out in his mind.

A shed caught fire in the middle of the night off Wyoming Highway 230, and Blake pulled onto the road just as the structure exploded.

“They had a bulldozer in there, and the fire got to the gas tank,” he said. “And ’whoosh’ - the whole darn thing went up.”

Although the bulldozer and shed were torched, firefighters used the Beast to save the family’s home, Blake said.

“Some of us old guys - we hate to see it go,” he said. “But the new guys - it’s junk so far as they’re concerned. It’s slow. But if you get it there, it still does good work.”

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Information from: Laramie Boomerang, https://www.laramieboomerang.com