Organizers gather at the send-off last month of a heavy rescue truck filled with firefighting gear. The equipment was gathered by the East Salem Rotary Club for donation to volunteer firefighters in Mexico. (Submitted photo)
A fire rescue truck loaded with medical and firefighting supplies recently shipped out a volunteer firefighting department in Guaymas, Mexico, in a donation orchestrated by a Salem group.
The heavy rescue was packed with helmets, breathing apparatus, protective gear, boots, hoses, extinguishers and an expensive hydraulic rescue tool called the Jaws of Life.
All told, the shipment was worth an estimated $500,000 in Mexico. Stateside, where the National Fire Protection Association dictates that most firefighting equipment must be retired after a decade, the market value of the supplies was near zero.
“They’re considered out of date and they can’t be used officially for firefighting functions,” said Kevin Mannix, president of the East Salem Rotary Club. “Often they are in perfectly serviceable condition.”
The club for the last several years has coordinated with Juan Armenta of the Hubbard Fire Department and Raul Garza of the Woodburn Fire Department to collect expiring gear from departments across the region to send to the Guaymas department.
“We managed to equip a lot of volunteer departments over there with turnouts, boots and gloves that they’d have to buy themselves out of their own pocket,” Garza said. “That’s our goal – at least give them some kind of protection.”
According to Armenta, this is the seventh such shipment to Mexico in 13 years. Guaymas is a town of around 120,000 along the east coast of the Gulf of California, located 300 miles south of the U.S. border.
“We gather supplies that aren’t being used anymore, and we hold them until we have enough to be able to send over there in a large quantity,” Garza said. “It usually takes us about two to three years to gather supplies.”
This latest shipment is the first to include a heavy-rescue fire truck, filling a gap in the volunteer department’s existing service. Past donations to the firefighters included ambulances or smaller rescue trucks, but never full-service fire engines.
The engine shipped out on Oct. 18 on a flatbed truck. That was meant to avoid putting unnecessary miles on a truck not designed to travel long distances, Mannix said. It arrived at the border on Oct. 20 and continued its journey south.
Garza got the rescue truck from the firefighting department in Camas, Washington. That’s his job on the team – coordinating with departments across the Pacific Northwest to find any equipment nearing the end of its legal lifespan.
The Salem Rotary Club covers any ancillary costs, which in this case included just $5,000 to buy the engine and another $5,000 in shipment costs, Mannix said.
Armenta works with firefighting departments in Mexico to identify their needs. Mario de la Cruz, a contact and firefighting colleague in the border town of Nogales, handles the legal logistics.
“Mario has been the connection,” Armenta said. “He does all the paperwork.”
The effort started more than a decade ago, when de la Cruz reached out to Armenta and suggested that they work together.
“He sent pictures about how bad the equipment was,” Armenta said. “We started to send pictures, and figure out their needs and what they were looking for.”
That first shipment went to Nogales. Once that department had better equipment, Armenta and de la Cruz started to turn their eyes toward other municipalities in the region that could make good use of the donated supplies. The result is a lasting relationship.
“They are 100 percent volunteers, they don’t get paid for anything, and it’s almost impossible to get equipment,” said Armenta, who also works for his department on a volunteer basis. “Anything that will make the firefighters in Guaymas – the bomberos – better.”
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