A closer look at the damage in Dundalk. Pictures from Baltimore County Station 6 & two links to the station's history.

Click here for more pictures of the damage to Station 6

STATter911.com coverage of Wednesday’s fire

A STATter911.com reader tell us about one recovery made from the rubble of Baltimore County Fire Department Station 6:

Station 6 Gamewell 15 Inch House gong was successfully removed by John Bryan (see Paul Ditzel’s Book Fire Alarm Chapter 5)after safe recovery of Engine 6 and Medic Unit. Gong dates back to old Station 6 CIRCA 1919. Gong was wet and snow covered and received slight darkening from fire, inside works excellent shape. Gong was dried off and preserved for future generations of Station 6 Firefighters.

Lost in the fire was a brand new Rosenbauer pumper (picture & specs) intended to be the new Engine 6, an older pumper, two ambulances and a National Guard Humvee. Peter Hermann of the Baltimore Sun interviewed the man who ordered the new fire engine. Here’s an excerpt:

… David W. Wolfe is in mourning. On Wednesday, he stood in the blowing snow, holding an umbrella and staring into the front bay of what remained of Station 6.

He quickly scanned the headlights of the Humvee – the only part visible under a mound of debris – and the charred remains of an ambulance. He focused on the Rosenbauer Pumper, and the only words the purchasing supervisor for the Baltimore County budget office could muster were: “I purchased that.”

Wolfe spends most of his days in an office cubicle, lost in a world foreign to the men and women he serves. Here is a sample of what Wolfe buys for county offices: “Tyler Special Operations Platform” and a “Mobile Vehicle Lifting System.” He doesn’t often find himself at a fire scene as firefighters pick through the debris.

Wolfe spent two years negotiating the bureaucratic procurement and bidding maze required of such large purchases, he said. The damaged pumper was one of nine engines recently bought by the county, custom-made and capable of spraying 1,500 gallons a minute.

When the new engine arrived, neighbors had watched and commented as a driver carefully backed it into its space.

“It was brand-spanking-new,” Wolfe said at the fire scene, shaking his head. It had just been christened Engine 6, the primary truck at the station.

You may recall in October we looked back at the Shillers Furniture fire 25-years earlier that took the lives of three Baltimore County firefighters from Station 6. One of those firefighters was James A. Kimbel. Peter Hermann and others report it was Kimbel’s nephew, Firefighter Thomas Kimbel Jr. who helped make the one rescue from the firehouse, getting Engine 61 out of the burning building.