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Volume 104 • Number 14 • Wednesday, January 22, 2014 • PO Box 188 • 111 E. Jenkins • Maryville, MO • 75¢
Vandals taking aim at county road signs By TONY BROWN News editor
Costly damage
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
County Road and Bridge Supervisor Larry Dougan displays a road sign Friday at the Nodaway County Administration Center that was heavily damaged by a firearm-toting vandal. Replacing defaced, destroyed and stolen signs costs taxpayers thousands of dollars a year and, more dangerously, makes it more difficult for firefighters and ambulance crews to respond to rural emergencies and injury accidents.
Something is wrong along the sparsely populated gravel roads in Nodaway County. And the signs are everywhere. That was apparent last Friday when Road and Bridge Supervisor Larry Dougan showed up at the County Administration Center to make his regular twice-weekly report to the three-member Nodaway County Commission. Usually Dougan just presents a verbal summary about drainage tubes that need to be replaced and bridges that need to be repaired. But this time he brought along a visual aid to illustrate a problem that has bedeviled his six-man crew for years — a twin-plated 911 locator sign taken from its post on Galaxy road just north of the Highway 46 intersection west of Maryville. The metal, green-and-white-painted sign looked like a souvenir from a war zone. One of the plates had literally been battered into scrap and bore about 100 bullet holes and dings probably inflicted with a small-caliber rifle, since most of the slugs failed to pierce the eighth-inch-thick metal. Such vandalism happens often enough, Dougan said, with about a half-dozen signs falling victim to gun-toting vandals
each month. But just because finding shotup signs out in the county is commonplace doesn’t make it any less of a headache. Road sign vandalism, Dougan said, doesn’t appear to happen as often these days as it did a couple of years ago when there was an epidemic of sign thefts during which malicious mischief-makers took to stealing signs — poles and all — or mashing them with vehicles and cutting them up with power saws. The newest fad involves simple marksmanship, though why a certain portion of the population seems to favor signs over tin cans is anybody’s guess. Signs bearing words like “Galaxy” or numbers like “200th” are favored targets, Dougan said, apparently due to the inherent bull’s eye attraction presented by the letter “X” and the numeral “0.” Of course, people are still stealing signs too. West-county resident Darrell Keever called the Daily Forum last week to report that one of two Quitman town-limit signs had been stolen from the south end of the village, which spreads out along Highway 113 south of Burlington Junction. The Quitman sign was state-owned and not county-owned, and replacing it is problematic since Quitman disincorporated in late 2012 after no one filed to run for a seat on the town board. Keever said he was upset that the sign had been taken since the town still exists See SIGNS, Page 6
City’s aging fire truck in need of a new home By TONY BROWN News editor
If anybody out there is looking for a good, used fire truck, please give the city of Maryville a call. Part of Maryville’s firefighting fleet since 1982, the aging pumper is due to be replaced with a new truck currently being assembled by Toyne Inc. in Breda, Iowa. Capt. Phil Rickabaugh, who runs the fire division of Maryville Public Safety, said Toyne has the new unit all but completed, and that the pumper will arrive at MPS headquarters shortly after going on display Feb. 5-7 at the Missouri Fire School & Expo in Columbia. The $281,000 pumper was purchased with revenues from the city’s half-cent capital improvements sales tax and was originally to be delivered this spring. But Toyne has been able to complete fitting out the stock Freightliner chassis well ahead of schedule. That means Maryville’s secondline pumper, a Smeal/Ford 8000 diesel with a five-speed manual transmissions, needs a new home. City Hall will accept sealed bids from potential buyers until 11 a.m. Monday, Feb. 3. Anyone interested in submitting a bid on the truck, which sold new for about $80,000 thirty-two years ago, can access the bid requirements at www.maryville.org/bidview. aspx?bid=554. Rickabaugh said Public Safety had hopes of selling the truck to some nearby rural fire protection district in order to keep the unit available for use in the Nodaway County area.
However, he said, it does’t look like any local volunteer departments are in the market right now, so what lies in store for the old truck is anybody’s guess. The pumper, which has 16,525 miles and 1,845 hours on the motor and comes equipped with a 500-gallon water tank, is available for inspection from 7 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday through Friday at the Maryville fire station, located at 222 E. Third St. Prospective buyers can call Rickabaugh for an appointment at (660) 562-3209. As for the new pumper, Rickabaugh said it will become the number-one unit in the city’s fleet, which, as a practical matter, also includes two trucks belonging to Polk Township and a “brush truck” shared by both jurisdictions. The existing first-response vehicle, a 1997 pumper, will become the second-line truck. With a sticker price of more than $280,000, Rickabaugh said the new unit, which comes equipped with a 1,000-gallon tank, will significantly upgrade the city’s firefighting capability and also contains a number of updated safety features. Imagine, for example, the car you owned in 1982 and the car you have now. Many of the improvements are much the same only on an industrial scale. First, the new truck’s cab will be equipped with air bags and hold five firefighters instead of three, all of whom will be able to buckle up using harnesses rather than lesssecure lap belts. The seats are also custom built to accommodate pop-out air tanks that firefighters will strap on en-
Pumper truck for sale
TONY BROWN/DIALY FORUM
Maryville Public Safety fire division Capt. Phil Rickabaugh kneels beside department mascot Higbee Tuesday in the MPS truck bay. Pictured in the background is a 1982 pumper truck currently up for sale by the city. The truck will be replaced next month by a new pumper currently being outfitted by Toyne Inc. in Breda, Iowa. route to the fire, saving valuable minutes once they arrive at the scene. Other features include “significantly more storage space,” digital-ready radios and wireless headsets. There is also an automatic transmission that will make the truck much easier to drive — especially for younger
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firefighters to whom gearshifts and clutch pedals are practically historical artifacts. While all those features are welcome, Rickabaugh said the increased tank capacity is perhaps the new truck’s biggest advantage in terms of increased firefighting effectiveness. A thousand gallons, he said, is
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about the amount of water needed to bring a “room-and-contents” blaze under control — meaning a good-sized fire that has yet to engulf a residence or other structure. “It’s enough to give us a good buffer zone while we are establishing another water supply,” Rickabaugh said.
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