At Superior Fire Department headquarters, sustainability is also a matter of health and efficiency.

One example is the around 340 solar panels on the roof of the fire station and its outbuildings.

“In the summertime when the sun’s out, we’re producing more power than we use,” Chief Camron Vollbrecht said.

That power is also used to charge two Ford F150 Lightning pickup trucks.

“Those pickup trucks have never been to a gas station. We’ve never had to put fuel in them because we plug them in here at work and on most days, we’re charging with the sun,” Vollbrecht said.

The trucks are used for medical calls and the battalion chief. Because they are kept in a warm garage, Vollbrecht says the batteries start warm. So they haven’t run into any cold weather issues in the few years of use.

The SFD also just got City Council approval to purchase an electric fire truck. It will have dual power units, so if the battery does start to run low on a scene, the diesel backup will kick in. Vollbrecht says that’s a critical redundancy.

“The other benefit to that is we don’t put any diesel exhaust inside of our buildings,” he said. “We know diesel exhaust is a carcinogen. And we look at firefighter safety, we want to protect them from that exposure.”

That also goes for pump operators who are out fighting a fire.

“Running a pump on a fire scene for a couple hours, normally you’d be standing right next to a diesel exhaust pipe. And you’d be sucking diesel exhaust for a couple of hours. In this case, we won’t have that,” Vollbrecht said.

The quietness of electric engines can also be better for firefighters’ hearing and patients’ stress levels.

The electric fire truck is on order and expected to arrive in early 2026.