By Emily Gillette

Contributing Writer

FRYEBURG — The fire department hopes to sell their old, worn out and hardly-used Jeep and one of the six-wheeler trucks soon, and buy a new side-by-side.

“The Jeep doesn’t get used that much because it’s so small. By the time you send somebody to East Fryeburg it’s going 40 to 45 miles an hour to get to where you’re going,” said Fire Chief Ozzie Sheaff to Fryeburg selectmen recently.

Sheaff went on to say that the fire department hopes to be able to sell raffle tickets if they can make sure ownership isn’t an issue. The only paperwork that exists for Fryeburg’s fire department as to where the Jeep came from or who owned it before comes from October, 1975, when the Fireman Fund Inc., a nonprofit organization that helps raise money for the department, paid two people to retrieve it from Pennsylvania.

“What we’d like to do is a raffle for $100 dollars a ticket for 100 tickets,” says Sheaff. “That would give us $10,000 to go to our new side-by-side, but we’re not sure yet what kind we want.”

The fire department has also been doing disaster training recently, but knows that more work and preparation always needs to be done. “Do we have equipment and/or plans to deal with a fire at the airport now that they have jet fuel?” asked selectmen Paul Naughton.

“We do to a point,” said Sheaff, “not since they upgraded to jet fuel — not 100%.” Sheaff says he would put the preparedness at 65%, but that they have the phone capability in the event of a fire at the airport.