Rising fuel prices impacting travel plans, public safety

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Fort Wayne’s NBC) - The sound of the gas pump nowadays means more money coming from your wallet than ever before and while the price of fuel is expensive for everyone, diesel drivers are being hit the hardest.

Kay Kohlhepp travels the country, living in her RV. She’s passing through Fort Wayne on Friday, on her way to Florida to get her RV, her home, fixed.

She says it’s going to cost her $1,000 in fuel alone just for the trip and and with diesel topping $5.50 per gallon in many places across the country, it’s forcing her to cancel her winter plans to live out west.

“With the cost of fuel, I can’t go as far as I normally do. Usually I go west in the winter, Arizona and Nevada. I won’t be going this year because of the cost,” Kohlhepp said.

However, it’s not just people in the business of leisure who are being impacted, so is public safety.

Robert Boren, Allen County Fire Cheifs Association President, says the budget for volunteer fire departments is set by the state and some have to pay market price for fuel. So, they have to take money that could help save lives to help make sure their trucks are fueled up.

“Once money that used to go to fire prevention will now have to be moved over to fuel,” Boren explained. “You’ll see other possible cuts of equipment that once would go towards newer, state-of-the-art equipment that could help save lives or get to an incident faster. They’ll have to cut money from there, just to move that over to a fuel cost line.”

And fuel price problems are trickling down to the volunteers because those who are responding to these calls for help, they’re paying out of their own pocket to put gas in their cars

So, without anyone knowing when prices will return to normal, all we can do is watch them rise.