Viola Receives New Fire Truck Through CDBG Funding

The small town of Viola has received a new fire truck thanks to a community development block grant (CDBG).

Mayor William Ramsey said the new truck will greatly improve the community’s fire coverage.

“It allows us to keep two engines right in Viola, and we also have an area outside of where we have another fire station,” Ramsey said. “It allows us now to keep two engines there when we only had one engine there before.”

The $166,000 grant allowed Viola to purchase a fully-equipped, 1,800-gallon pumper tanker.

Ramsey said having the truck means crews will have better access to water in case of an emergency.

“We don’t have a lot of fire hydrants out here, so just the ability to do that helps us a lot in the fact that we can take two engines, run on one of them, and when we run out of water we can send it back and hook up to the other engine,” Ramsey said. “We can run back and forth like that and we can have a continuous flow of water to the fire if we need it.”

Ramsey thanked the Upper Cumberland Development District for their assistance in applying for the CDBG funding.

Viola sits 12 miles south of McMinnville in Warren County, with the seventh-smallest population among incorporated towns in Tennessee.