New fire truck finally rolls into Igloolik

After more than a year of waiting, Igloolik finally has its new fire truck.

The bright red vehicle manufactured by Fort Garry Fire Trucks in Winnipeg peeled off the sealift on Tuesday, the second sealift to arrive in the community this summer and just a few weeks after the earlier anticipated arrival on Aug. 24.

It was one of four new fire trucks that were purchased for four communities in the territory, according to an email from the Nunavut fire marshal’s office in July.

Igloolik’s fire truck is one of several new municipal vehicles the hamlet received this summer. Chief administrative officer George Qaunaq said it also got two new water trucks and a bulldozer.

The hamlet had hoped to receive the fire truck last summer, but the shipment was delayed until this year’s sealift season.

While Igloolik’s existing maintenance garage isn’t large enough to house both the new fire truck and the community’s older fire truck, the hamlet is looking at an interim solution while it waits to find out if it can get a new purpose-built maintenance garage.

It hopes to house one fire truck in the current maintenance garage and the other one in the old community hall as a temporary solution.

“We’ve turned it into a parking structure. Hopefully it will have enough room to fit the old fire truck in it,” said the hamlet’s public works director Steve Weedmark.

He said that will prevent the older fire truck, estimated to be 20 to 25 years old, from having to be taken out of service.