When the McLeese Lake Volunteer Fire Dept. responded to an MVI-caused fire last Saturday afternoon on Highway 97 their yellow pumper truck would not start.
Later that evening Fire Chief Ian Hicks discovered the gas had been siphoned out of the truck, as well as half of the tank in their other pumper truck.
“My training officer Gord Rourke told me he couldn’t get the truck going and thought he must have flooded it or something,” Hicks told the Tribune. “At the time I thought ‘OK, it is a 40-year-old truck.’”
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However, when Hicks arrived back home at about 8 p.m. Saturday evening he tried to turn the truck on and thought something was odd.
“It was running like perfection last time I parked it here,” he said, adding they’d recently used the truck at practice and the check list showed fuel had been put in on May 24.
He then looked at the gauge on the dash and saw the gas tank was completely empty.
“I crawled underneath and bang, it was bone dry — just air,” he said. “ Luckily there was still enough gas left in the other truck to get it to the fire. We always have them fuelled up so we can respond to an emergency.”
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