Ohio county looks to sell truck, trailer that sees no action

By Joey Nowak
The Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS, Ohio — For sale: one gently used county vehicle, fully equipped to handle emergencies.

Knox County fire officials hope to unload their hazardous materials truck and trailer because it's barely, if ever, used and costs too much to maintain.

The equipment, purchased for about $30,000 in 2004 with federal Homeland Security grant money, is outfitted with monitoring devices, protective suits, decontamination equipment and radio communications.

The Knox County Fire Chiefs Association recommended selling the hazmat unit last week in a letter to the Knox County Weapons of Mass Destruction Advisory Board. The board, which oversees the purchase and sale of such equipment, will decide the equipment's fate in a meeting this month.

Mount Vernon Fire Chief Shawn Christy, whose department has maintained the vehicle, said he heard that some local fire departments or hazmat teams were interested in purchasing the equipment, but nothing is set.

Any money from the sale would have to be returned to the county's Homeland Security fund.

"There's a list of items they're allowed to use money for," said Tom Wallace, president of the Ohio Fire Chiefs Association. "You may start out with something and maybe it doesn't pan out and you wouldn't want to keep something around to waste. You want to buy something more of value for that region."

Christy said the vehicle hasn't been used in his two years with the department and might not have been before that. Meanwhile, Mount Vernon's costs for insurance, maintenance and training were slowly adding up. While the Knox County seat picks up the tab for the equipment, nine departments across the county have access to the vehicle.

"Some counties that don't have a lot of highways or a lot of industry probably don't have a lot of incidents," said Jeff Walker, the director of Licking County's office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

The full-time Northwest Area Strike Team and the Columbus Hazardous Materials Response Team, which serve Franklin County, are fully equipped to handle multiple cases a month and have a range of services at their disposal.

After the sale of the vehicle, crews from Columbus and surrounding counties would be able to handle the occasional Knox County incident.

"What we're looking at are minimum requirements that every county should have a hazmat team operating on the scene within 30 to 45 minutes," said Bill Brobst, supervisor of the Columbus team. Other central Ohio teams ought to be able to safely cover Knox County if it chooses not to have a team of its own, he said.

Copyright 2008 The Columbus Dispatch