Local Firefighters found themselves working in familiar territory this morning, their own Fire Station. The Randolph Village Volunteer Fire Station is now severely under-equipped. Firefighters are left wondering what to do next.
The 43-year old station is now trying to re-group. The focus has become how to keep the response going, with so little of their own equipment. “It's overwhelming, to think about what we're going to have to go through to get back up,” said Fire Chief Jay Collette. Just after 6:00 Tuesday morning, Randolph village firefighters got a call they didn't expect. Their own station was on fire. “It had extended into the ceiling of the facility. Initial knock-down went very rapidly. Then we had to pull the roof off and get the extensions out,” added Collette.
Fire crews from Randolph Center, East Randolph, Braintree, and Bethel all responded. “It's a brotherhood whether you're in this town or that town,” the fire chief said, humbled by the response. Crews quickly went to work on what caused the fire.
A firetruck, soon became the focus. “What went wrong inside the firetruck, I can't tell you at this point, it's something either electrical or mechanical,” said Todd Ambroze, a Fire Investigator for Vermont State Police. With one truck alone, costing upwards of $450 Thousand, the tally on this fire could be close to a Million Dollars worth of damage.
“What we normally do is we look for the least amount of damage and work towards the most amount of damage,” commented Ambroz. That includes the building itself, other trucks, and a lot of lost gear.