Day 17- March 25, 2007

We all met in the hotel breakfast area at 0745 hours. My brother Ron had to leave by 0830 hours for the airport. After breakfast Ron said his goodbyes to everybody and he loaded his luggage in my car for a trip to Sky Harbor Airport. When we got to the 143 Airport Freeway it was blocked off with cones. There were no signs saying how to get to the airport. Luckily, when I had picked up my brother Tuesday, I had ended up coming up 40th Street to University Avenue to get to the airport.

When I saw the 40th Street exit coming up I knew where to go. Funny though that they wouldn’t let all those trying to get to the airport on the 143 where to go when they had blocked off the airport access freeway. I dropped my brother off at Terminal 2 and headed back to the hotel. I went to my suite and worked on the photos for the Day 16 report. Then I joined the rest at the pool. It was sunny and hot, 74 degrees by 1100 hours. The kids were having fun in the pool and many of the Augsburg baseball players were trying to catch a tan before the flight home. I told my nephew Keith about the airport exit off of I-10 being closed and showed him how to get to the terminal. Their plane didn’t leave until later in the afternoon.

I checked out of the hotel, said my goodbyes and headed to Tucson around noon. The drive down was great because there were virtually no trucks on the road. Drivers were using the left lane anyway. I got into Tucson around 1330 hours and stopped at TFR Station 8 on the way into town. Their new engine had broke down during the night and were using a reserve, but their regular engines was parked out back (one of 17 Pierce Enforcers delivered in 2006). I got photos of both.

A rookie firefighter tried to help me with my outdate Tucson map (marked 1981 stations). He tried to print me out a computer list of station addresses, but the captain stopped him saying they were not allowed to give out station locations, phone numbers etc. Whatever! The rookie did tell me how to get to new Station 20 (new since I’d last been there anyway. I drove to Station 20, but was met with a not too accommodating TFR member. He couldn’t get rid of me fast enough after he took me to the apparatus floor. It’s too bad, because they have all new apparatus, an engine, ladder and heavy rescue (ALF).

I headed to Station 5, but it was totally empty. I kept heading south until I came to Station 11 and a very nice crew pulled out their new engine. They told me there should be community college classes going at the new fire training center near the prison on Wilton Road (near new Station 6) until 5pm. I went by the Red Rood Inn I usually stay at here and was told to come back in an hour as they wouldn’t have any rooms ready for another hour.

That was just enough time to drive out to the new TFR Training Center on Wilton Road. There isn’t much south of I-10 on Wilton Road. I drove through a fair amount of desert before I came to the prison and then the combined Tucson Police/Fire Training Center. It’s a humongous facility spread out over a huge area. Just the fire apparatus storage building has five double bays and can hold ten fire trucks.

There were four reserve engines parked out in the yard. I got photos of each. Then I saw new Station 6 further don the road and stopped there. Two very nice fire fighters greeted me and pulled the engine out for photos. When they attempted to pull out their brush truck, they discovered the previous shift had left the key in the on position- dead battery.

They offered to push the rig out for photos, but I kindly declined. One of the firefighters pulled his own pickup truck around to jump the brush truck. They told me that there are many places the four-wheel-drive brush truck can go that the engine can’t even get close to. They do not have many runs at the station, but when they do the runs are usually long runs. They expect the area around them to build up in the near future.

It is amazing how this city has grown in the last 20 years- almost as much as the Phoenix area in percentage. They’ve added five new stations and the sixth is well under construction (#22). They have plans for many more new stations as the area continues to grow.

Tomorrow I hope to be in Albuquerque by this time. It’s about 440 miles from Tucson to Albuquerque.

That’s all for now.

Your Roving Reporter