Fairlawn is helping to shed a little light for Streetsboro firefighters.
The city, with City Council’s blessings, is donating an unused piece of equipment that can be installed on a Streetsboro vehicle that will provide light at the scene of an emergency.
Fairlawn Fire Chief Russ Hose said the light tower is not compatible with any of the vehicles in his department.
“It’s of no value to us, it’s been sitting in storage for the past 7 to 8 years, and sounds like it would be a good fit for them,” Hose said.
Hose said the equipment was purchased when the city had plans of getting a bigger vehicle. The city opted to buy a smaller vehicle and the light tower has sat in storage ever since.
“So many of our calls are in the Summit Mall lot and parking lots,” Hose said, “so to take a big vehicle and try to maneuver into some of those areas just wasn’t practical.”
Hose said the city could have sold it or auctioned it off, but Streetsboro recently contacted the city saying it had a need for that exact mount.
Streetsboro Fire Chief Robert Reinholz said it was nice of Fairlawn to donate the equipment to his department.
“We have 14 miles of Ohio Turnpike that run through Streetsboro and it is completely dark, plus there are other portions of Streetsboro where we don’t have any lighting,” he said.
Reinholz said at one accident scene the stretch of roadway was so dark firefighters had to rely on the light provided by police cars to be able to do their job.
Streetsboro had the same piece of equipment, but it no longer works.
“It’s much easier to get one that’s identical to the one we have,” Reinhoz said, “than to try and find a new one and reconstruct the roof mounts and everything else.”