Before the sirens sound: A look at the team behind the Milwaukee Fire Department

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — Behind every fire truck that rolls out, every ladder that rises and every hose ready to use when seconds matter, is a small team most of us never see.

They don't run into the flames but without them no one could.

"My day-to-day, there isn’t really the same day...ever. It’s pretty unique," said Gregory Brulla, Welder and fabricator with the Milwaukee Fire Department.

Just west of downtown Milwaukee sits a near century old building.

"We're very fortunate to have to the building that we're in here now." "It's almost 100,000 square feet. The space that we were in previously, for almost 100 years, we had just simply outgrown," said Milwaukee Fire Department Deputy Chief Darin Peterburs.

Formerly known as the Milwaukee County Transit System bus garage and repair shop is now home to the Milwaukee Fire Department's repair team.

"Any given time we can actually work on at least up to ten to 15 vehicles that time and it's kind of tricky because we got 15 people," sad Aaron Nash, Milwaukee Fire Department Fleet Manager.

15 people making sure the fleet of 200 vehicles are up to standard, a job that Peterburs says is the lifeline of the department.

"It's different than working at a shop where you're working on a vehicle that's just going to go out on the road to do their daily things. They're actually working on vehicles that are going to respond to potentially save somebody's life," said Peterburs.

Nash says each job that rolls through their doors is a priority.

"Anytime they're not on the road it's not good, it's critical because if a fire comes in now, they have to pull a rig in from somewhere else because it's in here getting repaired, so timing is pretty critical," said Nash.

He says with their line of work, it often comes with unique challenges.

"We have a rig that comes in let's say we have a rig that needs a window shield and one of the rigs that we discontinued using will take the windshield from that rig and replace it with that," said Nash.

If you've never seen a firetruck in a repair shop, it's looks like a like real life transformer.

"We get to play around with fire trucks what kids dream isn't to play around with firetrucks all day," said Nash.

However, once under the hood Milwaukee Fire Department Mechanic Chester Szydel says there's usually more than one issue that needs to be addressed.

"A lot of times we end up triaging and a lot of what goes on with them even though we do normal maintenance," said Szydel.

Szydel says the cities firetrucks answer call after call.

"When they come in they might need instead of just a oil change they might need a additional anywhere from 5 to 10 fixes," said Szydel.

He says with each run the firetrucks take a beating.

"They go through a lot of wear and tear. They're not driving like a normal vehicle. They're speeding to a scene and a lot of time of heavy acceleration heavy breaking," Nash explained.

The way the trucks have to drive while answering calls is the reason they're frequent visitors back at the repair shop.

"Aerial truck maybe replace back tires every three months front tires every six months and do brakes every two months oil change depends on how busy is the company We do have maintenance every month or every three weeks," said Nash.

Mechanical repairs aren't the only jobs keeping the team busy.

"There’s a lot of a lot of accidents I fix a lot of bumpers and doors and steps and things that are hit by cars," said Brulla.

Brulla is tasked with thinking outside the box.

"A lot of damage happens from people driving in excessive speed. They wrecked stuff that really somebody’s older rigs. It’s almost impossible to repair back to being functional," said Brulla.

In an effort to save the department money, instead of buying each damaged part - Brulla figures out how to make what's needed.

"Things are so destroyed that it’s like I can kind of try to measure like we just fixed one of the newer ladder trucks that had an accident and I made a bunch of these brackets and we tested it and I broke one of the ones I made because I didn’t have it exactly the same way as the original, but we didn’t really have an original to go off outside you know readjust redo," said Brulla.

Even though the work is tough and the stakes are high, the team agrees they do the best they can with what they have and are proud to be part of something bigger than themselves, a team helping protect the City of Milwaukee.

"I remember the first month I worked here like walking like fire trucks. I know now after six years and I still I got to fly a ladder out today and it’s still cool," said Brulla.