Stop 35 – Taking on New Roles

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THE RURAL FIRE DEPARTMENT

By the early nineteen-sixties, the farms and homes around Nebraska City needed better fire protection. Until then, the only help out in the country was the city street department's street flusher.

In nineteen sixty-four, the Nebraska City Rural Fire Protection District was formed, run by a five-member board of people who live in the district. That board bought the first truck made just for rural fires, a Ford with a five-hundred-gallon pump, delivered in nineteen sixty-five. More trucks followed over the years, including tankers to carry water where there are no hydrants, and small four-wheel-drive grass trucks.

Starting in nineteen sixty-nine, the Nebraska Forest Service supplied used trucks that were turned into grass fire trucks, including a nineteen fifty-two Studebaker and a nineteen fifty-two Willys.

MUTUAL AID

On April twenty-ninth, nineteen seventy-five, Nebraska City firefighters met with the other departments in Otoe County and formed the Otoe County Mutual Aid Firefighters Association.

The members are Douglas, Dunbar, Nebraska City, Otoe, Palmyra, Syracuse, Talmage, and Unadilla. When one town has a fire too big to handle alone, the others come to help. And that help doesn't stop at the county line. It even reaches across the river into Iowa.