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LET'S GO
PHILLIES!!!
It's Almost
Over!!!
Our little Tommy is gone from West
Chester, and the bachelor party has come and gone. In a few
weeks, our hero will be wrapped up in marital bliss with his new
wife. Our friends, and fans want to wish Tommy, and his new wife
to be nothing but the best for the future...
So what is to become of the-dixon.com?
We have no idea. We hardly update it. Not that we have nothing
creative to write. It's because, well...um... OK yeah. We have
nothing creative to add to the site anymore, and when we are
creative, we are just too damn lazy to work on this site. We
don't know what the future hold for any of us, but all we can
say is keep checking in. Never say never here.
Hard Times For
Volunteer Fire Companies
By William Ecenbarger
FOR THE
INQUIRER
MARIETTA, Pa. - For 169 years, the
members of Pioneer Fire Company No. 1 have been performing one
of America's most dangerous and critical jobs for this tiny
borough along the Susquehanna River in rural Lancaster County.
They are roused from dinner and sleep to follow the siren's song
to what is often a gamble with the unknown - a unique
combination of fire dynamics and combustible materials. Death
and serious injury - from burns, toxic gases, hidden explosives,
collapsed floors, and caved-in roofs - are only a ladder rung
away.
Remarkably, they do it all for nothing. Voluntarily, they go to
blazes. The same service from a paid department would cost local
taxpayers at least $300,000 a year. Instead, they pay a fraction
of that as a token subsidy.
But throughout suburban and rural Pennsylvania, the volunteer
fire company - an institution that dates to Ben Franklin - is in
deep trouble. Just 35 years ago there were 300,000 volunteer
firemen in Pennsylvania; today there are no more than 50,000 - a
decline of about 80 percent.
"Many Pennsylvania communities are dangerously short of
firefighters, especially in the daytime," said Edward Mann, the
state fire commissioner. "Ordinary house fires are getting
second and third alarms, not because they need the apparatus,
but because they need the firefighters."
A survey of 915 Pennsylvania departments this year by the
Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. found that 60 percent were still
losing volunteers, 66 percent had delayed buying new equipment,
and 54 percent did not have protective equipment for all
personnel to respond to hazardous-materials calls.
In the suburbs around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, a new kind of
company has emerged, a hybrid that is still mostly volunteers
but that includes at least one full-time, paid firefighter. In
other suburban areas, especially around Washington, such
"combination" companies are stepping-stones to units made up
entirely of career firefighters financed by taxpayers.
The East Whiteland Volunteer Fire Association in Chester County
hired its first paid fireman in 1996, and today it has a force
of nine full-timers and eight part-timers backed up by some 30
volunteers. The arrangement costs township taxpayers about $1.2
million this year.
There is no accurate information on the number of combination
companies in the Philadelphia suburbs, but other municipalities
with such units are Montgomery Township, Pottstown, Lower
Merion, Conshohocken, Norristown, and Bryn Athyn in Montgomery
County; Berwyn, Phoenixville, and Coatesville in Chester County;
and Upper Darby and Darby in Delaware County.
Last year the Westwood Fire Company in Chester County received a
$445,000 federal Homeland Security grant to help volunteer
companies throughout the county recruit and retain firemen. John
Sly, the assistant Westwood chief, said the money would be spent
on newspaper, billboard, and television advertising, Web sites,
and presentations at high schools.
Jon Merrell, president of the Marietta company, says there are
80 members of the department, but only 16 are active
firefighters, half as many as there were 20 years ago.
He gives three reasons for the declining interest: fund-raising,
training, and lifestyle changes.
Mann agrees.
Today's volunteer fireman spends far more time chasing money
than fires.
This year Pioneer No. 1 needs about $90,000 to operate, and it
will get only about $40,000 of that from the borough. The rest
will have to come from an array of events that includes a
monthly bingo game, a chicken barbecue six times a year, bake
sales, sandwich sales, pancake breakfasts, spaghetti dinners,
raffles, dances, carnivals, Atlantic City bus trips, and
"fill-the-boots" days when members stand on street corners and
ask motorists to toss loose change into their empty boots.
"Anything we can do to raise money - you name it, we'll try it,"
says Merrell. "But these guys signed on to fight fires, and a
lot of them resent the fact that they spend about 70 percent of
their time at the menial tasks of fund-raising. They get tired
of flipping chickens and calling out bingo numbers, and so they
quit."
The old "surround-and-drown" theory of firefighting has given
way to more sophisticated techniques that require more equipment
and more training to meet more complex fires. Marietta, like
most volunteer departments, subjects its members to the same
training levels as paid city firemen. Before they can ride on
one of the company's two trucks, new members must take some 200
hours of training. Active members spend about 10 hours a week in
additional training in advanced firefighting, handling hazardous
materials, water rescue, and other activities.
"I don't get excited about a new volunteer until he's completed
the training," says Merrell. "We get a lot of prospective new
members who, once they see this commitment, walk out and are
never heard from again."
Along with more modern firefighting techniques comes the need
for expensive new equipment. "Twenty-five years ago when the
siren went off, I'd run out and jump on the back of the truck,"
says Harold Kulman, a veteran Marietta firefighter. "Now I have
to put on $2,000 worth of clothing and equipment. You've got to
sell a lot of chicken to come up with that kind of money."
By default, volunteer fire departments have become custodians of
streets and highways, cleaning up liquids after vehicle fires
and chainsawing trees knocked down by storms. Every couple of
years, the Susquehanna River overflows its banks, and Pioneer
No. 1 is called to evacuate residents and pump out their
basements.
Marietta's active firefighters include a truck driver, mechanic,
retail clerk, roofer, warehouse supervisor, and several plant
workers. None of them works in Marietta. "People don't live
where they work, or work where they live," says Mann. "In the
old days, the alarm would go off and the guy at the hardware and
the guy at the dry cleaner would jump in their cars and race to
the firehouse. Now a lot of businesses don't even allow their
employees to leave work to fight a fire."
There are several programs designed to reverse the downward
spiral. In the Pittsburgh area, full scholarships to the
Community College of Allegheny County are offered to recruits
and members. Several fire companies, such as Colonial Park near
Harrisburg, offer college students free living space as a means
of staffing their firehouses around the clock. A new
Pennsylvania law gives volunteers a $100 state tax credit, and
there are bills before the legislature that would give tax
credits to businesses employing volunteers and provide tuition
aid to students who volunteer.
"These are great ideas, and they will help stem the outward
tide," says Mann. "But the longer-range solutions are that local
governments, who are legally responsible for providing fire
protection, are going to have to kick in more money, and the
departments are going to have to surrender some of their
autonomy, to consolidate so they run more efficiently. There are
too many areas in Pennsylvania where you can play bingo every
night and buy barbecued chicken every weekend. We're competing
with each other."
The survival of the volunteer fire department has enormous
implications for Pennsylvania. A 2004 state Senate report
estimated that volunteer firefighters save taxpayers $6 billion
a year.
Since Benjamin Franklin founded what is believed to be America's
first volunteer department in Philadelphia in 1736, the real
enigma about firefighters has not been why they wear red
suspenders, but why they do it in the first place. At Pioneer
No. 1 in Marietta, Merrell muses and shrugs. "I guess it's our
way of giving back to our community."
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