The year will bring new leadership as Fire Chief Steve Hergenreter retires after 35 years of service to the community.

He joined the department in 1989. He was promoted to captain in 2000 and to chief in June 2017.

His last day on the job will be Feb. 28.

A civil service selection process has narrowed the list of Hergenreter’s potential replacements to Assistant Fire Chief Matt Price and one outside candidate, Michael B. Zylka.

-Photo courtesy of the Fort Dodge Fire Department _
A firefighter works at the scene of a house fire at 702 N. 16th St. on Nov. 16. Fort Dodge firefighters responded to more than the usual number of structure fires this past year.

City Manager David Fierke is expected to announce his choice for the job before Hergenreter’s last day. His choice will have to be approved by the City Council.

The Fire Department will be transitioning into some new vehicles this year as well.

The biggest of those vehicles is an elevating platform truck called a tower ladder. It will have a boom attached to the middle of the truck. At the end of the boom there will be an enclosed platform where firefighters will stand while working at fires and emergency scenes. That boom will be able to extend 95 feet into the air.

The tower ladder will take the place of the department’s current ladder truck, which was delivered in 2006. The older ladder truck will be retained as a backup unit to be used when the tower ladder needs maintenance or for situations when two aerial devices are needed.

Hergenreter said the tower ladder will be “much more versatile” than the older ladder truck.

The department will also take delivery of two new ambulances this year.

But one of those ambulances won’t be entirely new.

In a cost-saving move, the department is having the box — that section of the unit in which patients are transported — on a 2016 model ambulance removed from its current Ford chassis and is remounting it on a new Ram chassis.

The other ambulance will be an entirely new unit to replace a 2014 model.

Hergenreter said the initial plan was to replace each ambulance after it has been in service for five years. But he said thanks to thorough maintenance practices, ambulances are now being kept in service for up to eight years.