Chester Fire Department ready to roll with new tanker

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

On Monday morning the Chester Fire Department took delivery of its latest piece of firefighting apparatus. The department had ordered the $500,000 tanker more than two years and two fire chiefs ago, but a number of hiccups delayed the delivery, which had been expected late last year.

“It’s a very nice addition for the town of Chester and for the neighboring communities,” said Fire Chief Scott Richardson, noting that having a tanker for rural firefighting helps taxpayers get lower property insurance rates.

The cost of the new truck was predominantly borne by a FEMA Assistance to Firefighters Grant of $452,000. The remainder of its $512,000 cost was paid by matches of $37,000 from the town and $23,000 from the Yosemite Engine Company,  the non-profit fundraising arm of the Fire Department.

Richardson noted that the Engine Company will continue to support the tanker as it gets fitted out with equipment.

The FEMA grant was written in 2021 by Town Manager Julie Hance and then-Assistant Fire Chief Ben Whalen, who became Chester’s interim chief when Matt Wilson retired. Whalen was president of the Yosemite Engine Company at the time. He became the first full-time paid fire chief in Ludlow, a post he still holds.

Normally the Assistance to Firefighters Grants must be spent within two years, but the town applied for and received an extension until the end of 2025 when it became clear that the truck would not be finished in time.

Fire Captain Steve Vertefeuille pointed to new features of the new truck, including a fold down storage area for the portable water tanks, which contain water dumps from tankers and supply water to pumpers. Currently the heavy folding tanks sit on top of the town’s fire engines and require half a dozen people to bring them down and put them back up.

In addition, most tankers in the area have ports called “dumps” at the rear where water is released into the portable tanks. The new tanker also has side dumps as well giving the crews more flexibility in dropping off water.

Maybe the biggest feature is that the new truck is not just a tanker but also a pumper that can move 1,500 gallons of water per minute while the department’s two fire engines each can pump 1,250 gallons per minute. According to Richardson, with the added ladder racks and ladders the tanker actually qualifies as a fire engine.

The 3,000 gallon truck is a big improvement over the old tanker, which was considered to be dangerous and difficult to operate. While the new truck has baffles in its water tank that keep large amounts of water from shifting while the truck is moving, the old tanker did not. Other problems with the old tanker included a 9-speed split manual transmission that most firefighters could not drive, “touchy” brakes and a 4,000-gallon tank that a welder told the department could fall off the truck.

Tankers are important in rural firefighting, where there are no fire hydrants and other sources of water – like rivers or ponds –  often can be difficult to access and inconsistent in volume. At large fires like the Potash Brook fire of January 2019, several fire companies brought tankers and ferried water from a hydrant near the armory building on Route 11 West and dumped it into a portable water tank.

Tankers can also be used for fires in town if the water pressure is insufficient for a large blaze.

It’s not clear looking at the FEMA website if the AFG program will continue. Calls to regional representatives of the program in New England either went to voicemail or were “not accepted.” The last grant application period was last fall and no new grant window has been published.