The Turlock City Fire Department has four new firefighters on board and a second new fire engine on order.
Firefighters Cody Gold, Scott Sousa, Corey Thibault and Rick Koperski took up their engine duties mid-May after graduating from a six week in-house fire academy.
With the additions, the department now has 43 line personnel manning its four stations. Chief officers, a fire marshal, two office assistants and neighborhood services technicians bring the division to a staff of 52.
Testing and interviews happened last week to fill an operations chief position empty since the recession, said Chief Bob Talloni.
The duties of the operations chief include dealing with the downtime of an older engine, in addition to the department’s newest firetruck, bought in 2008, which Capt. Mike Harcksen described as a lemon engine. Firetrucks are not covered by the lemon law. “It’s been out of service a lot of time and it’s also started to develop reservations in the crews (to using it), and it’s actually left crews stranded while responding Code 3 to multiple (medical) calls and fire calls,” Harcksen told the Turlock City Council on May 10.