It’s been four months since a tornado touched down in Autryville, leveling its only fire department, destroying two of its engines. “If we’ve just had the building or just had the apparatus replacement then we would have been OK. But we’ve had it all,” said Chief Andrew Hawkins with the Autryville Fire Department.
Hawkins said their third truck may need to be declared a total loss as well. And to add insult to injury, he said about $48,000 is still owed on the old firehouse.
Hawkins put the total cost of that debt — along with building a new firehouse — at about $900,000.
It’s a lot of money for a small town of about 200 people.