Kyle Peveto
The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas

Feb. 27 -- Rick Rosenthal talks about his fire engine with the inflection of a proud father.

As Gilchrist Fire Department president, Rosenthal spent 28 years building the small department after moving to the Bolivar Peninsula.

Losing the department's fire hall to Hurricane Ike and disbanding the volunteers has added to the loss he and his wife suffered in the Sept. 13 storm.

"We lost our home. We lost our business. We lost our way of life," said Rosenthal, 73, who plans to settle now in Winnie.

"I don't know what's going to happen to Gilchrist. I don't think it's ever going to be built up enough to support its own fire department," he said.

Before he handed over the gleaming red 2003 model Freightliner fire engine to the Hamshire Volunteer Fire Department on Thursday, Rosenthal took a moment to talk shop and brag about the 20-foot engine that weighs in excess of 30,000 pounds.

"Drives nice, doesn't it," the mustachioed Army veteran said with a grin to one of the truck's newest drivers.

"Like a dream," said Daniel Hidalgo, 30, who drove the engine a few miles from its storage spot. "Drives like a pickup truck."

With most of Gilchrist leveled and the small department's volunteers scattered across Southeast Texas, Rosenthal and others decided to disband.

Their $89,000, brand-new ambulance and the $107,000 six-year-old fire truck went to Hamshire, and their remaining truck, a brush fire truck, will be given to Galveston County.

Founded in 1954, the department's cinder block and steel fire hall survived several storms, but Ike left them with only a slab.

Before the storm hit, firefighters drove the Gilchrist department's trucks to a chemical storage unit in Hamshire owned by a relative of a volunteer. After the storm, the equipment remained in storage until Thursday. An employee at that facility, Darrell Lowe, started the trucks once a week to let them run.

With the truck and ambulance already being stored in Hamshire, that department asked Gilchrist about buying them. After a few weeks of negotiations, Rosenthal said they decided to use the Gilchrist department's insurance money to pay off the two vehicles and just give them away.

Rosenthal said the Gilchrist department gave the engine and ambulance to Hamshire because he knows what it's like to run a small department.

When he joined the Gilchrist department in 1981, they had two aging trucks and $3,000 in the bank.

Hamshire firefighters drove one other engine before receiving the Gilchrist donation -- a 1975 Ford given to them by the city of Port Neches.

"We have been in dire need," Hidalgo said. "I've been here twice in the last year to try and get to a house fire, and that old pumper wouldn't start. I had to wait for someone from Winnie to bring me a truck."

Hamshire already has two ambulances, but one hit a cow in the fall and has since been repaired. The other is used only as a back-up and now can be donated to another small, rural department.

"It's cool," said Justin Chesson, 28, the Hamshire fire chief. "I've been beside myself since they told us about it last week."

Residents served by the Hamshire department should be pleased also, Chesson said. Because their previous engine was older than a decade, home insurance rating services would not recognize their department. The new fire engine could allow residents served by the Hamshire department to get lower insurance rates, he said.

"All bad situations have a silver lining," said Hidalgo, as he used a ratchet to remove the former owners' license plates from the new fire engine.

"It's a blessing."

Copyright 2009 The Beaumont Enterprise
The Beaumont Enterprise (Texas)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News