Valley Fire receives new truck from Montana DNRC

DRUMMOND – The Valley Fire District (VFD) received a new wild land attack vehicle from Montana’s Department of Natural Resources & Conservation (DNRC) Wednesday.

“We put these trucks and vehicles out into the local and volunteer departments to help with their wild land response as well as to assist us, as we have a lot of overlapping protection areas,” explained Jonathan Clark of the DNRC office in Anaconda. “The better the equipment they have the better we can do these jobs together.”

Granite County is one of the 56 Montana counties that are part of the County Co-Op Program in which the DNRC gives vehicles to the departments. These vehicles are used for local fire suppression as well to aid the state in fighting wildfires as a front line of attack.

Gold Creek, which is a substation of the VFD, received a similar truck several years ago. Clark estimated the value of the new truck to be around $80,000 and it holds 500 gallons of water.

VFD Chief Sean O’Connor said that his department would be purchasing the older DNRC vehicle to add to its fleet and possibly selling or retiring one of the older vehicles.