A decommissioned Whitecourt fire engine is now in Mexico

During a recent Whitecourt Town Council meeting, Fire Chief Brian Wynn and Fire Captain Bill McAree shared about their journey down to Mazatlan, Mexico, to deliver a decommissioned fire truck. The operation was part of the Los Amigos Project started through the Lethbridge Sunrise Rotary Club years ago. The project provides decommissioned fire trucks, ambulances, school buses and other vehicles to communities in Mexico that can give them new life. Seven vehicles took the journey down for 2022.

The duo met up with the rest of the convoy in Lethbridge to begin what would end up being a 4470-kilometre trip and take them seven days one way. “We had to be at the parking lot at 6:30 am. I think it was minus two that morning. Then we headed south. If you saw on Global News, there was a good video of us leaving the parking lot, and Whitecourt’s Engine 3 actually led the parade out,” explained Chief Wynn. “We started with fourteen volunteers, so two people per vehicle driving all the way down there.”

The first night, the convoy made it to Great Falls, Montana. One mainstay for much of the trip was the Rocky Mountains which they followed as they headed south. “From Great Falls, we went down to Beaver, Utah. The scenery was beautiful. That’s when we started to see solar panels. There’s miles and miles of solar panels,” began Captain McAree. He chuckled that American roads didn’t have frost heaves. “This is also where we started to realize that none of our vehicles had air conditioning,” he joked, which brought out laughs from those in attendance. “This is also the day that Engine 3 got kicked back to the end of the convoy,” said Chief Wynn. “If you remember, Engine 3 always put out diesel fumes. Following it for two days was enough for everybody, so we kicked it to the back,” he laughed.

Once the group reached the Mexico border, things got a little slow, much slower than it had been to cross the USA border from Canada on day one. “The buses were loaded with wheelchairs, stretchers, bunker gear, helmets, boots, all kinds of things. In the fire truck, we had breathing apparatus and air bottles. So, to get it across the border, because that stuff wasn’t inventoried per vehicle, we had to pull it all off and empty the buses and the fire trucks,” explained Chief Wynn. The hundreds of pieces painstakingly removed were delivered to the crew in Mazatlan a couple of days later.

“It’s a paperwork nightmare to get stuff across two borders,” explained Chief Wynn, adding that the Rotary Clubs began the paperwork eleven months before the trip. “The lawyer actually went with us on the trip as one of our drivers.”

One unexpected occurrence happened when they were just two hours away from their final destination. “We had to do a u-turn because we missed the bypass, and that’s when our transmission went out on our truck,” said Captain McAree. “We had to get it towed the last two hours into Mazatlan,” added Chief Wynn.

Once in Mazatlan, the crews shared their knowledge with the communities receiving apparatuses. They also learned startling information on how emergency services run in that part of the continent. “The Town of Whitecourt has 400 fire hydrants, and Mazatlan city, with twelve million people, has 60 fire hydrants. So, that’s quite a thing,” explained Captain McAree.

Chief Wynn said they taught two departments how to use the Whitecourt fire truck, including all the extra equipment they included on the truck. “When we decided our truck was going to Mexico, we didn’t want to send it down empty. Our truck was equipped with hoses, novels, suction hoses, axes, pipe poles, and ladders. It was good to go. All they needed was water, and they could go to anything that would’ve been thrown at them.”

For a department to receive an apparatus through the Los Amigos Project, they get vetted through their local Rotary Club. “They have to prove that they can run it and are trained to do it, and they will look after it. That’s for everything, whether it’s a school bus, ambulance, or fire truck. A community doesn’t get one unless the support is there to keep it going. Rotary looks after making sure that those communities will not just get a free truck and then sell it or whatever,” said Chief Wynn.

While there, Captain McAree said they spotted an Edson fire truck delivered previously through a similar project run out of Grande Prairie. “We also saw a Grande Prairie ambulance which none of the doors on it closed. They were bungeed closed, but it was out. We saw it on an accident call.” The one community that received an ambulance had one donated to them seventeen years ago, their only one. “This is a community of 50,000 people, and they had one ambulance. Now they have two,” said Captain McAree.

As the Whitecourt rig becomes a staple in its new home, everyone who sees it will know where it originated. “The Whitecourt decals will stay on the truck for the life of the truck so people can visit, as tourists in Mazatlan and they could see a Whitecourt fire truck go by. So, that’ll be pretty cool,” said Chief Wynn. The fire hall that the truck will work out of has a tin roof and no walls. Far different than the hall it had in Whitecourt.

The journey was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for them, and Captain McAree called it amazing. “Whitecourt really stepped up.” They presented Mayor Tom Pickard with thank you’s from the department that received Whitecourt’s decommissioned truck and the Mazatlan Rotary Club, thanking them for contributing to the program. “(The head of Mazatlan Rotary Club) told me that he is so thankful. The ambulances save a lot of lives, and fire trucks save lives and property, and school buses keep their kids out of crime,” said Captain McAree.

As they attended various ceremonies, both men could see just how grateful the departments and people were. “It’s amazing because we don’t know how they operate when you see the old equipment. The ambulance and fire station there, they do 35 motorcycle crashes a day. They are busy. They use equipment that is bungee-corded together, like doors on the ambulance, but that’s what they use daily in and day out in a large city. After 25 years in Canada, a fire truck is useless, but down there, it’s saving lives on a daily basis,” said Captain McAree.

“Their run off their feet. Every time we saw an ambulance, it left. There are new ambulances there, but those are for the rich people. It’s incredible what they are working with and how they are holding things together. Their moral is phenomenal. They are such a good bunch of people,” said Captain McAree. The 2022 trip was the tenth trip since the inception of the Los Amigos Project, and the Lethbridge club has now taken down 60 vehicles.