VIDEO: For the first time in more than 25 years, a brand new ladder truck pulled into the Bemidji Fire Station on Monday.
Aside from simply replacing its older counterpart, the truck's longer ladder will allow the department to access the tops of some buildings in town that it wouldn't have been able to before.
"We can get to the top of them now, whereas before we may have been stretching it," said Chris Loebs, one of the department's assistant fire chiefs. "It still won't get us to the top of Tamarack (Hall)—they don't make trucks that big."
The truck drove all the way to Bemidji from Appleton, Wis., a trek of nearly 500 miles. Once it arrived at about noon, the department went through a number of checks to make sure everything was in working order.