SCOTTOWN — Christmas came a little late for the members of Windsor Township Volunteer Fire Department, but if you ask them they did not mind.

On Saturday they received a new fire truck.

“This is the second new truck in the 46 years that we have been in operation,” Don Christian, fire chief said. “This truck is a 2010 International Pumper. It was built by SMEAL, with the help of Tony Johnson, a representative from Dill’s Fire Service in Ravenswood, W.Va. It will replace a 1978 six-by-six that we had and used as a tanker. We had to take that truck out of service due to safety issues.

This pumper is something that the department has have needed here for sometime. This pumper has a 1,800-gallon tank on it, which will allow for water on the scene of fires and will also help out when water needs to be shuttled in.

This truck also has telescoping lights that will help out when we are out at night on fire scenes, along with a dump tank on the back which will allow us to shuttle water to fire scenes.

Water to be shuttled with this feature we can back up to a dump tank unload all of the water in our tank and then take off for more water. This truck also came with chains for the wintertime so that they can make it safely to any calls and a generator to help run any electric equipment needed to use on scene.

“This new truck will benefit the residents of Windsor Township, and we would like to thank them for their support by passing our tax levy,” Christian said.

This pumper will also help out neighboring departments that call us to assist them by bringing in more water to them. We were able to get this truck was through a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant.

The cost of this truck was around $280,000.Without the people of Windsor Township passing the tax levy, we would not have been able to afford it,” Christian said.

“The process for the grant was a long one,” said Lt. Mike Bias. “We submitted our application in the spring of 2009. After it was submitted the application was checked, against guidelines that FEMA had set. After the guidelines were checked, it was sent before a review committee. Then after the review committee approved the application, we found out in the winter of 2009 that our grant had been accepted. As you can see, the wait was well worth it.”