The Portage Fire Department got a bigger boat... and they're holding a dedication ceremony for Marine 1 Samuel L. Malarik Fire Rescue Boat Saturday morning at Portage Lakefront Park, at 9 am. When we spoke to Fire Chief Tom Fieffer (fy-fer) earlier, he told us the 36-foot boat, that's ten-and-a-half feet wide, has a two-thousand-gallon-a-minute pump on it, that will allow them to spray water "quite a distance". The boat can respond to fires along the northwest Indiana shoresline, at the Port of Indiana and steel mills, for instance, as well as boat fires on the lake. A FEMA (fee-muh) grant covered the cost of building the vessel.  Chief Fieffer says in the past, the boat they had for rescues in Lake Michigan would basically just let them deploy divers.

 

Read more: http://www.indiana105.com/news/region-news/27641-dedication-for-portage-fire-rescue-boat.html