WYOMING, Mich.- A West Michigan company is playing a big role in those deadly California wildfires.
Wyoming based HME Ahren's Fox builds fire trucks at their local assembly plant. The company's President Jim Monterusso tells us they currently have around 300 trucks on the front lines in California.
"We have at this point several hundred trucks in California, so when we hear these news reports we think about the people we work with much more than these trucks," says Monterusso.
And those news reports have been tough to watch. More than 80 people have been killed, hundreds still missing and thousands of homes destroyed in some of the worst wildfires in our nation's history.
"I still don't think we know what the human toll has been just from the most recent fire and it makes us concerned about what do we need to do in the future and what kind of equipment do we need to have to support these people fighting these fires," says Monterusso.
The company specializes in customization and one current truck being built will include a refrigerator.
"If you're on a fire scene and it's hot and it's dirty and you need a cold drink of water, you can get that on your fire truck," says Monterusso.
HME Ahrens-Fox is one of several Michigan companies that are playing a role in California but Monterusso says the true heroes are the firefighters.
"There are a number of fire departments, there are over 300 fire departments in Michigan many of them have deployed firefighters all year long to California and do it every year with little or no attention, it's just part of the brotherhood of firefighting," says Monterusso.
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