F-550 Bomb Truck Rolls Out to Serve & Protect in Florida
Fort Lauderdale is safer with Broward County Sheriff’s Office’s newest recruit, custom built to handle the scariest of situations.
We all know how wild Florida can be, from random bags of cocaine landing on the roofs of churches and crime watch meetings, to a retiree shooting out the tires of a Ford Super Duty owned by a big telcom because the truck was parked in front of his driveway. Alas, things aren’t always funny in sunny Florida, such as the mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in January 2017.
The mass shooting led to a promise to help the Broward County Sheriff’s Office handle such horrific crimes. According to Miami FOX affiliate WSVN-TV, the office now has a new F-550 custom built and equipped to handle and defuse bombs.
The F-550 was purchased by the Sheriff’s Foundation of Broward County, and is equipped with an X-ray machine, bomb-defusing robot, and other gear needed to deal with whatever madness awaits at a given crime scene.
According to Miami CBS affiliate WFOR-TV, the F-550 will serve as a smaller bomb-defusal unit built with places like Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in mind.
“They had an issue bringing the bomb squad to Terminal 2,” said foundation executive director Juan Arias regarding the shooting at the airport. “There were cars left in the middle of the road, it was hard to maneuver, they couldn’t maneuver so they had them running into the building with equipment which is very heavy.”
The foundation handed the keys of the $162,000 F-550 to Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony in late February 2019. And while we hope it doesn’t see action any time soon, this big, brawny Ford is ready to help protect and serve the people of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County.
