Members of the Sloatsburg Volunteer Fire Department greet Sloatsburg’s new 78′ Aerial Ladder Truck, which was delivered to the Village at the beginning of December 2016.

The sky was still lit up with colorful clouds on the recent Friday evening that Sloatsburg’s new 78′ Aerial Ladder Truck arrived in the village Municipal Lot. Word of mouth spread as members of the Sloatsburg Fire Department made their way over to Village Hall to take a look at the department’s first ever ladder truck.

The 78′ Ladder Truck, along with an on-order new rescue/pumper truck, will allow the department to meet nearly all of its firefighting needs – for now and into the future.

Both the ladder truck and rescue/pumper truck will be housed in a planned new fire truck garage which will be constructed in the northeast corner of the Municipal Lot sometime in early 2017. The planned garage will match the Municipal Building in design, complete with brick facade. The current small building next to Municipal Building that acts as a fire department equipment garage will be demolished to make room for additional parking.

Until the new SFD garage is built, the department’s Ladder Truck will be housed at the Sloatsburg Public Works Department garage. SFD members will also soon undergo ladder truck training at the Rockland County Fire Training Center.

Congrats to the #Sloatsburg Fire Department which recently had a brand new 78′ Aerial Ladder Truck delivered to Village Hall. #Rockland pic.twitter.com/MIJEvRsUtq

— Sloatsburg Village (@Sloatsburgny) December 12, 2016

The Ladder Truck took a long, winding road to reach Sloatsburg and partially has its roots in the Ramapo Woodmont Apartments debate, going back several years. The proposed three-story apartment complex to the south of Sloatsburg beside Auntie El’s farmstand, by all accounts, would require a ladder truck to safely address fire and rescue issues.

The SFD showed up enmasse to the Town of Ramapo Planning Board Woodmont meetings – voicing concern about fire rescue and indicating that safe fire coverage would require the department to upgrade to a costly ladder trucks – to shrugs from the Ramapo Planning Board and Woodmont representatives. The debate also exposed nuances of Ramapo’s firefighting politics, which awards firefighting contracts to unincorporated parts of the town. Village fire departments compete for those contracts and while Suffern and Hillburn fire departments already had ladder trucks, Sloatsburg did not – until now.

The purchase of a new rescue/pumper truck and ladder truck will also help reduce SFD insurance costs.

Altogether, the Village of Sloatsburg will invest some $2 million dollars in the new fire department trucks and garage, which will also involve modifications in the spring of 2017 to the Municipal Building parking lot — an opportunity to make beautification improvements to that central of all Sloatsburg properties.