Hall County Fire Rescue (HCFR) has taken delivery of a new marine rescue boat, but it is not yet in service. Spokeswoman Kimberlie Ledsinger answered a few questions Thursday about the new piece of equipment.
- This is our new Landing Craft Style, 38 foot, rescue boat that will be replacing our current marine rescue boat on Lake Lanier. It is equipped with a 1500 gpm (gallons per minute) pump, twin Yamaha 450hp motors, a 300 gallon fuel tank, and was built by Lake Assault in Superior, Wisconsin.
- This is completely different than anything we have been able to use on the lake before. It has fire suppression capabilities, a heated/cooled cabin for patient care, and overall more power on the water.
- This is a necessity on Lake Lanier due to the amount of visitors each year. We have about 14 million visitors, which inevitably brings more medical calls, boat wrecks, boat fires, and overall more incidents on the water. Having fire suppression capabilities will allow our Marine Rescue team to respond and immediately put water on any fire that is accessible by boat, including lake house fires. About 80% of the calls that our crews run on the lake are medical. The cabin will provide space for our personnel to work efficiently as if it were an ambulance on the water. Overall, patient care will be improved not only for the patient, but for the crew as well.
- The cost was $697,776.57.
- The boat is not in use yet. Our team is currently training to be fully prepared to respond to lake incidents when the boat is operational. In the meantime, our current marine rescue boat is still prepared to respond as usual.
- It will be operational as soon as our crews are familiar and confident with boating operations. This boat is much larger than our current MR-1, so it is requiring more in-depth training from our instructors. We take operating any of our units very seriously and value the opportunity to operate state of the art equipment to respond to the Hall County citizens to provide the care they deserve.