Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette The Village of Laurium, continues to assess equipment that was housed in the DPW garage when the building burned last month. While some tools have been salvageable, the vehicles are so far considered a total loss.

LAURIUM – The Village of Laurium continues to make progress in recovering from the Feb. 5 fire that destroyed the village’s DPW facility along with most of the department’s equipment and tools. Village President Pro Tem Jeff Erickson, a member of the Streets/Equipment/Sanitation Committee, said that of the equipment borrowed or rented from neighboring municipalities, the DPW currently has returned all but a sander, belonging to the city of Hancock, and a couple of dump trucks owned by Keweenaw County.

Erickson said Boss Plow, of Iron Mountain, donated a sidewalk machine to the village enabling the DPW to maintain village sidewalks. In addition, the village recently received another donation of significance.

“Milwaukee Tools reached out to their regional sales representative,” Erickson said. “They had us put together a tool manifest and they donated about $50,000 worth of tools that we took possession of a week and a half ago. They had a lot of tools that they flat out donated to us, and the rest were added at a discounted price.”

In terms of heavy equipment, the village has purchased, and taken possession of, three loaders, one of which has a “wing and blade setup” that will alleviate the need for two graders.

The village was also able to acquire a loader mount snow blower that Erickson said, attaches to one of the front-end loaders.

Also last week, said Erickson, the village placed a winning bid on a tandem axle dump truck.

“This gives us the ability to replace probably two of those small Kodiak dump trucks with one truck,” he said.

Meanwhile, cleanup and salvage at the fire site continue.

“Currently, we are in the salvage phase trying to see what the status is on all of the tools and equipment, if anything can be saved,” Erickson said. “The next phase for the existing site is clean up and, it has to be done before Little League starts to minimize the possibility of people getting into it and possibly getting hurt.