THE FRIENDSHIP ENGINE & HOSE CO. has been serving Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, since 1780 and is one of the oldest fire companies still active in the state. Friendship is one of five VFD’s in the borough, but it is also the only one that has refused to bring its membership up to the minimum standards mandated by the Chambersburg Fire Chief.
In the mid-1970’s Chambersburg took over most of the financial obligations of the town’s 5 volunteer companies while combining four of them in two borough-owned firehouses. The 5th company still operates out of its own house. Chambersburg also owns most of the appratus and provides paid drivers for the engines. The McKinley St. station where Friendship operates out of is also used by the Good Will Fire Company.
The borough also requires the volunteer firefighters to meet minimum standards for training and personnel requirements such as background checks. Fire Chief William FitzGerald has given Friendship until April 10 to remove the fire engine that they own and until September 1 to qualify its members properly. Chief FitzGerald tells WHTM-TV:
“We’ve gotten past the point of talking to them about meeting the standards,” said FitzGerald. He says their volunteers do not meet national standards in things like CPR and Hazmat.
“Most of these things are not hard to get. We provide the computers — most can be done online,” said FitzGerald. But he says they also have not fulfilled bare minimum borough requirements.
“The biggest stepping stone is we need to have a full background check, a physical and we need them to sign an arson affidavit,” FitzGerald.
The time for talking is over after several months of discussions and no attempts being made by the volunteers to meet the minimum standards.
WHP-TV Ch. 21 has this video report:
The Chambersburg Public Opinion has MORE HERE.
Friendship Engine & Hose Co. WEBSITE. (Recommended, click on the History Page button.)
To “FD” or Not “FD,” – Politicians Puzzled
CommentsTHE SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA, CITY COUNCIL is considering a brainstorm presented by their City Manager Mark Weiss. He thinks that the cash-strapped city could save $3 million to 5.5 million if they shut down the police department and the fire department and contracted other agencies to provide the emergency services.
His plan calls for contracting with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office to patrol the streets and answer calls, and making an agreement with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, to come in and answer fire calls.
According to THIS ARTICLE in the San Jose Mercury-News, Weiss said he prefers the outsourcing plan because the city needs to “do something bolder” than what they have been doing for the past several years. His alternative proposal to the “outsourcing” is to save the money by, among other tricks, closing the city’s Youth Center and discontinue televising the City Council meetings. (We are not making this up…Ed.) The article does not say whether Weiss has gotten any pre-approval from either the Sheriff’s Dept. or CalFire for this scheme.
Firegeezer is of the opinion that the good citizens of San Carlos are in real trouble when their city is being run by somebody who thinks that running a “youth center” is more important than running a police station. When you think that televising the city council public meetings is more valuable than sending out a fire engine to handle an emergency, then you have completely lost touch with reality.
“If we adopt this, if we totally outsource departments, it will dramatically affect how we do business,” Weiss said. (At least he’s got that part right….Ed.)
The San Mateo Daily Journal has MORE.
San Carlos Fire Department WEBSITE.
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IN VIGO COUNTY, INDIANA, NEVINS TOWNSHIP Trustee Carl Gregory arbitrarily shut down the town’s volunteer fire department last Monday March 1 after he became upset with some administrative shortcomings of the VFD.
Gregory donned his best coveralls for this interview with WISH-TV last week:
But the township leaders have had second-thoughts on such a drastic reaction to the lack of a few reports and rapidly called a meeting of all the involved parties to settle the dispute. Work has commenced at the firehouse to satisfy some requirements and the volunteers are expecting to return to answering alarms in a few days.
WTHI-TV Ch. 10 filed this video update last night:
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