Yesterday, the Mechanicsville Volunteers began the process of demoing Hydraulic/Battery Rescue Tools to upgrade the equipment carried aboard Rescue Squad 2. With evolving technology in the car manufacturing world, and the use of newer and stronger high strength metals, our current tools from 2013 were not designed for some of these materials.

To help us better serve the citizens of Mechanicsville and surrounding communities we are working diligently to upgrade our cache of tools with the best of the best.

This weekend 15 members, including one Board of Director, the President, all the Chiefs, numerous officers, and numerous firefighters with varying levels of experience put to test Holmatro and Amkus rescue tools.

At the end of the day, both manufacturers put on an excellent performance and the members will have some lengthy discussions over the next few days to lay out any and all pros and cons found. Next weekend we’ll be back again demoing Hurst and Genesis Rescue Tools.

We’d like to thank Amkus and Holmatro for their time yesterday!

We’d also like to thank PJ Forrest Towing for helping us out with bringing us numerous cars to the station to demo the tools on.