One of the oldest volunteer fire companies in Baltimore County now has a fleet of vehicles no older than 10 years after welcoming its most recent addition.

Founded in 1906, the Violetville Volunteer Fire Department replaced an engine with 60,000 miles from 1975 on August 19 with a brand new 2010 Rosenbauer engine at a cost of about $560,000, said Samuel Suter, a firefighter at the department for five years.

The department's fleet now includes two engines, a special unit vehicle and a utility vehicle.

Violetville resident Rickie Zopp, a five-year veteran at the department, said the new engine's safety features make firefighters' jobs a little easier when responding to an emergency.

At the top of the front of the new Engine 343 are two lamps to illuminate an emergency scene..

Ten-year-old Engine 341, the other engine at the department on Benson Avenue, has only one.

Engine 343 also has another lamp toward the rear of the engine allowing the driver to see toward the rear by using the vehicle's mirrors, Zopp said.

"We have more fluorescent lighting to light up the scene," Zopp said. "The lights are a little more powerful than the ones that are on 341."

Engine 343 also has noise-canceling headsets that allow firefighters to communicate with each other inside the truck even as the siren wails, Zopp said.

Capt. Steve Pearsall, a Violetville resident, said the new engine has a 750-gallon water tank, the same size as the tank on Engine 341, and can pump 1,500 gallons per minute.

Pearsall noted the reserve is generally used until a hose can be connected to a hydrant.

Even though it holds the same amount of water, the new engine's pumping system has a significant upgrade over that of Engine 341.

"The pump is up-to-date, has more computers on it. A lot of things are preset on it, so we don't have to sit there and monitor it," Zopp said. "If (Engine 341) was running out of water, it would just continue to pump and would tear the inside of the pump up.

"(With Engine 343) if the water's low, it shuts the water off."

The easy-to-use pump is part of the master plan of Gary Purkey, chairman of the committee that designed the engine.

"(We wanted to) keep it simple so anybody can use it," said Purkey, who has worked at the Violetville station for 35 years. "You can't screw anything up unless something mechanical goes wrong and the engine shuts off."

To preserve the vehicles, Suter said the department typically alternates the vehicles it uses each month.

The new engine, though, will handle all the calls for the first couple of months and had run about 30 calls as of Sept. 8, Suter said.

Due to the heavy rains brought by Tropical Storm Lee last week, the Violetville Volunteer Fire Department answered seven calls on Sept. 7.

On a typical heavy day, Suter said, the department will respond to three.

"Right now, we're running the (new) one as the primary, to get all of the bugs out of it," said Suter, a Violetville resident.

At the top of Engine 343's cab is a decal honoring the 343 firefighters who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It just happened to be the piece that was numbered that way ," Zopp said.

He pointed out that Engine 341 also has a Sept. 11 decal.

"We like to keep something on each piece for the (fallen firefighters)," he said.

Despite having a shiny new vehicle with modern features, replacing the old engine wasn't easy.

"This was something that needed to happen," said Pearsall, a department veteran of 20 years. "But we miss our old fire engine as well."