PUNXSUTAWNEY- Two Alabama firefighters got a small taste of Pennsylvania weather en route to pick up a fire truck purchased from the Punxsutawney Fire Department.
Central Fire Department Chief Scott Depp explained that the department has sold its Ford F-8000 tanker to the Colbert Heights Fire Department in Tuscumba, Ala.
The Central firefighers build Tanker 20 themselves, "and we'll never do that again," Depp said.
Colbert Heights Chief Ervin Lindblon, who flew from Huntsville, Ala.; to Washington D.C., and finally to Pittsburgh Thursday to pick up the truck, said the tanker his department had was destroyed in an accident during the second week of October.
When asked if anyone was hurt, he said, "No. Just pride."
Kevin Malone, chief of the neighboring New Bethel Fire Department, also in Tuscumba, accompanied Lindblon on the trip. He said his friend's department had a hard time finding a replacement vehicle.
When asked how the department found Punxsutawney's tanker, Lindblon said, "Luck. We'd done give up until my wife found it on the Internet. It met everything I was wanting in a truck."
While Lindblon's department will change the names and numbers on the vehicle, there's one feature that's staying: The groundhog-firefighter decal on the back.
"That's what sold it," Lindblon said. "It gives the truck character."
Lindblon said his wife wanted to put off a trip to pick up the tanker until it was closer to Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, but Lindblon suggested that if she wanted to come that late, then she would be the one driving the tanker home.
Lindblon and Malone expect to depart Punxsutawney this morning for the trip back to Alabama.
Meanwhile, Depp is also leavin for Union City, Michigan, to pick up Central's new tanker, a 2006 Freightliner.
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