Saturday, March 2, 2013 The last thing that Nashua Fire Lt. Mark Wholey and his crew expected when they rolled out of the East Hollis Street station on the way to a call Friday afternoon was for one of the fire engine’s front wheels to fall off.

But that was precisely the situation in which they found themselves when Engine 4, Nashua Fire Rescue’s second-oldest regular-service engine, skidded slowly to a stop on the edge of East Hollis Street no more than 50 feet from the station.

“They were quite taken aback, as you might imagine,” Deputy Chief Karl Gerhard said, standing with the crew and police near where the hobbled vehicle lay.

“What’s most important is that no firefighters or citizens were injured,” he added, crediting the driver, whom he declined to name, for “falling back on his training” to wrestle the crippled vehicle safely to a stop.

What went wrong, Gerhard said, won’t be known for two or three days, “until we get it in the shop and the mechanics get a chance to look it over.”

Luckily, he said, the call to which Engine 4 was responding – smoke from a roof on West Pearl Street – turned out to be a malfunctioning oil burner, a minor incident that was quickly under control. Engine 2 from Lake Street station was dispatched when Wholey radioed that Engine 4 was out of service because of a mechanical problem.

Engine 4, a 2004 Pierce Arrow XT, is second behind Amherst Street’s Engine 1, a 2001 Pierce Enforcer, among the department’s “front line,” or regular-service, engines, Gerhard said.

Of the other four regular-service engines – all of which are Pierce Arrow XT models – Engine 2, a 2011 model, is the newest, followed by Engine 5, 2010; Engine 3, 2009; and Engine 6, 2008.

In 2011, Engine 4 was the city’s busiest engine, responding to 2,034 calls, slightly more than Engine 2’s 1,906 runs, according to the most recent data available. Engine 4 and Ladder 2 are the department’s designated mutual-aid companies.

Within an hour of Engine 4’s collapse, which left arc-shaped rubber and scrape marks behind, the crew was transferring their gear to Engine 8, a spare engine that arrived from the airport station.

Fire Commissioner Kevin Gage said he happened to be driving by the scene on his way home when he noticed something wasn’t quite right.

“As I got closer, I saw (Engine 4) just sitting there, tilted over,” Gage said, echoing Gerhard’s earlier comments.

“First, I was just glad everyone’s OK. That’s my main thing.”

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/995501-469/front-wheel-falls-off-nashua-fire-rescue.html