Story originally published by The Daily item

Several headlines in recent weeks have highlighted significant upgrades to emergency response fleets across the region. Each new vehicle, whether a new patrol vehicle for police, tanker engine for a local fire company or an ambulance adds to the safety and protection of Valley residents.

Milton and Sunbury fire officials have recently rolled out or will soon roll out new apparatus.

Fire officials in Milton said it took three years of planning, fundraising and searching before a new 2022 Pierce Enforcer was put into service in November. It replaced a 1998 engine that firefighters liked so much, they went looking for a replacement with similar schematics. The old engine, Fire Chief Scott Derr said “served the borough for 30 years as a workhorse. We said ‘why change everything? Let’s just modify. If you look at this engine, there are a lot of similarities. There was a lot we wanted to keep.”

The new truck, as expected, comes with plenty of safety features, including rollover protection and HAAS Alert’s Safety Cloud service that detects other responding trucks with the device to help prevent accidents. Forward thinking led to the discovery that it was important to have the new truck fit through the Race Street underpass.

In Sunbury, two new fire trucks are scheduled to be put into service in 2023. The Americus Hose Co., on Linden Street, just purchased a ladder truck for more than $1 million. The East End Fire Department purchased a pumper engine truck for around $700,000. Both are due to be online next year.

Last week, we learned of a new mobile command center in the works in Snyder County, an asset county officials said could be a regional asset.

The command center will be a 44-foot mobile unit allowing emergency responders to dispatch help from any location, putting front-line assets in a more centralized location to help with communication and more efficient use of resources.

Make no mistake, these are expensive upgrades, each reaching six-figure some and seven into the million-dollar range. Some organizations have used private donors to offset costs. Others battle it out for grants and spend countless hours fundraising to find the monies need to write these hefty checks.

These are also valuable community assets that enable our first responders, an incredible mix of employees and volunteers to do their jobs even better. Just think of the emergency response in the days leading into the holiday, one that left 17 people displaced and another a fatal fire response.

Tools like these upgrades will help them do their jobs more effectively — certainly money well spent.

NOTE: Opinions expressed in The Daily Item’s editorials are the consensus of the publisher, top newsroom executives and community members of the editorial board. Today’s was written by Editor William Bowman.