October 2006 - Guayaquil, Ecuador The Benemerito Cuerpo de Bomberos de Guayaquil (the Guayaquil, Ecuador Fire Department) recently placed into service a 1977 Seagrave fire engine that previously saw service as Engine 211 in Bedford Village, New York. Engine 211, which served the Bedford community from 1977 to 2005, is now called Engine 4 and is based in Station 2, Company "Sirena 4", located in the heart of Guayaquil. Station 2 is also the home of a 1970's vintage Seagrave Aerial Ladder, a tanker, a mobile cascade unit and an ambulance. It is one of the oldest and best equipped firehouses in Guayaquil, being built in 1870 and remodeled in the 1950's.
Although it is not uncommon for older fire apparatus to find their way back into service, it was through the efforts of one of Bedford's bravest that E-211 found its way to Guayaquil. Firefighter Pete Lazaro, working with Mahopac resident and FDNY Captain Daniel Sheridan, purchased the unit from Excelsior Fire Equipment Sales, the Seagrave dealer that sold the Bedford Fire Department its new Seagrave Pumper and took the old Seagrave as a trade-in. Excelsior's Rick Lambiasi generously sold the pumper to Mutual Aid Americas, Inc. (www.mutual-aid.org - that's the name of Pete and Dan's non-profit) forgoing any profit. It was a win - win situation all around.
To round out the team, an Ecuadorian company called Pronaca, a national producer of chicken, shrimp and beef, donated the funds to purchase the fire engine, and Ecuadorian Lines provided the shipping. You may not know this, but they aren't called banana boats for nothing. Ecuador is one of the world's largest exporters of bananas and shrimp, among other commodities. And, Ecuadorian Lines is the shipper that brings those delicious items fresh to our tables.
The project was started during the summer of 2005 and completed this past summer, including a new paint job for Engine 4. Thanks to the efforts of Pete & Dan and the people at Excelsior, Pronaca and Ecuadorian Lines, Guayaquil has been able add another fire engine to its stable of apparatus and beef-up its firefighting capabilities.
Mutual Aid Americas is a public charity that assists challenged urban fire departments beef-up their equipment and apparatus inventories and provides regularly scheduled fire fighting training in the region.
Guayaquil is a port city and the largest metropolitan area in Ecuador, home to some 3,000,000 inhabitants. It is located at the mouth of the Guayas River, on the south of Ecuador's Pacific Ocean coast. The Guayaquil Fire Department, which is made up of 250 career fire fighters and 650 volunteers, is the largest fire department in Ecuador. Its firefighters work out of 42 firehouses, spread throughout the city.
As a comparison, New York City has over 10,000 firefighters serving a population of 8,000,000 inhabitants that swells dramatically during the workday. Using the resident population numbers, each New York Firefighter covers 800 inhabitants, compared with over 3,300 for each Guayaquil firefighter. Unfortunately, Guayaquil still experiences large numbers of fires each year.
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