By Julie Wernau
Published on 10/1/2004
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Waterford - The town is discussing firehouse consolidation as an option for Waterford, a town with five volunteer fire companies, some of which have been in existence more than 75 years.
The Board of Finance requested that the Board of Selectmen form an ad hoc committee, made up of representatives from the Representative Town Meeting, the Board of Finance and the Board of Selectmen in order to get the ball rolling on another study of the fire service.
At its last regular meeting, the Board of Selectmen tabled the vote until Nov. 23, until Cohanzie Fire Company Chief William Henderson and a team made up of all five fire chiefs and two members of the Board of Fire Commissioners can come forward with a presentation with a similar goal: consolidating a number of studies already performed on the fire service into a single, definable plan to bring before the town.
"I'm not ready to go out and pay somebody $20,000-$30,000 to tell us what the chiefs already can tell us," Selectwoman Cheryl Larder told the Board of Selectmen.
Henderson said his subcommittee will be able to come up with what they hope will be the final report on the fire service, but not everyone is so optimistic.
Board of Finance Chair Kenneth Brown said they've commissioned at least five reports on the fire service, all of which came up incomplete or were rejected.
"There doesn't seem to be any time frames put on these things so they are going on endlessly," Larder said.
The 2000 Government Consulting Group Report, which the town used to study ways to save money after energy deregulation, suggested consolidating to three firehouses, but did not have the support or cooperation of the fire service, said Board of Finance member Bill Sheehan.
The report is often brought up at government meetings as the ultimate directional tool for the town.
Another study, termed Fire Scope 2001, found that the current locations of the town's five firehouses kept response times down to two or three minutes in an industry in which the goal is no more than three minutes from firehouse to fire.
Although the fire service has held the study up as evidence that no further studies are needed on consolidation, some members of the Board of Finance and other town boards say Fire Scope can't hold water.
Sheehan called it "a good study written by fire folks for fire folks," saying that other possibilities other than having five volunteer companies were never even approached in the study.
"If the experts say 'no' to consolidation because of the population density and roads, okay, we have five firehouses. If it said 'no matter where you relocated, there can't be less than five and here's why' ...okay," Sheehan said.
Other studies have been commissioned in the past few years, including one by a UConn research team, another termed Task Force 1995, a third Draft Apparatus Report from 2003, and a few others that have been swimming around for so long that neither members of the fire service or town officials interviewed could remember when they were commissioned or what they were called.
Many in the fire service questioned the town's reasoning for commissioning so many studies. Fire Commissioner Eric Munsell said he is convinced that the studies will keep coming until the town gets the answer it is looking for: consolidation.
"The joke of it is they want to close the busiest station in town," Munsell said, citing Jordan's Fire Engine Company No. 1, the town's first incorporated company and a building that is falling into disrepair at an expense to the town.
However, Brown and Sheehan said they aren't sure they'll be closing any stations; they just want the idea studied. In fact, Brown said, with all the development in store for the town, he wouldn't be completely surprised if a study found they needed a sixth firehouse.
"They feel strongly about their five firehouses," Sheehan said ... I understand that emotional attachment."
Brown said he is looking for information about fire service needs as related to the town's projected growth. He hopes the subcommittee will provide a list of all the firehouse equipment, including fire trucks, and a maintenance repair schedule and condition report for each piece of apparatus. He'd like a similar report on the buildings.
"We don't have enough facts," he said.
Munsell agreed that there could be some extra equipment running around Waterford's fire stations, but said that in a fire service run by volunteers, the town could find that removing equipment and firehouses means losing volunteers, who take pride in their individuality and enjoy a competitive relationship among firehouses.
"You're going to need to fill the vacuum with something and it's probably going to be paid personnel," Henderson agreed.
Fire Apparatus
At Cohanzie, which is first to calls at the mall and one of two companies that takes calls along Interstate 95, the fire company has at least two trailers paid for either wholly or partially by donations.
Kobyluck Construction donated the district's "special op" unit in 2003, to hold specialized tools. The company's heavy rescue truck, W-57, runs to accident scenes with the trailer behind it at all times. Together, the two can handle everything from vehicle extraction to building collapse.
Another trailer, which houses the dive team, is a source of pride for the company and was put together mostly with the help of volunteers. Inside, empty scuba suits and air tanks hang from its walls about wooden jerry-rigged benches.
In addition, the station owns the town's 1000-gallon pumper. Most pumpers only hold about 500 gallons, but Henderson said when the company is first to a fire on Interstate 95, which has no hydrants, they need every drop.
He, too, has been worrying about money, but thinks the answers lie in creativity rather than consolidation.
Recently, the company decommissioned their aerial truck and eliminated a pumper at the station to make way for a single hybrid of the two, nicknamed the "Quint" and scheduled to arrive within a few months.
"I want the services that made me want to stay in Waterford for 35 years," Henderson said.
At Goshen Fire Department, Chief Thomas Dembek said they'd be looking for a new rescue boat soon. The company, which is in the town's beach district, recently had to run a search and rescue mission on the 18-foot boat in the remnants of Hurricane Ivan under dangerous 50 mph winds.
The 20-year-old rescue boat is the company's oldest piece of apparatus besides a couple of antique trucks the station uses for hayrides and other fund-raisers. They, too, have a pumper and minipumper, a smaller truck with reels of hose used for putting out small brush fires.
Dembek is not interested in consolidating equipment in a town whose road system, he said, is a series of dead ends.
"None of the roads connect," Dembek told the Board of Selectmen, motioning to a map of the town and pointing out hundreds of dead-end streets. "They go nowhere."
Over in Quaker Hill, where water is scarce on Bloomingdale and other un-hydranted areas, Charles Hayes, a former fire commission, RTM, and Planning and Zoning member, as well as a longtime volunteer, pointed out Quaker Hill Fire Company's unique pumper.
The "Telesquirt" allows firefighters to back the truck in and fight a fire via remote control when the heat gets too intense or dangerous to get closer.
The company's fire trucks hold 500 gallons each, but Hayes said in places like Bloomingdale Road, they need another truck filled and standing by in case they run out of water before they run out of fire.
"Sometimes they do," he said. "Sometimes they run out."
Quaker Hill volunteers refurbished an old police boat the company has had to use on the Thames River and during fireworks displays as well as an ice sled and a brush truck.
In addition to all the usual equipment, Jordan Fire Company houses the town's only large aerial. The 105-foot ladder truck has been running to everything over two stories since Cohanzie took their ladder out of commission. The quint's ladder will be about 75 feet when it arrives.
Fire Chief Timothy Sullivan said they never know what they'll need when they get to a call, so it's best to come prepared.
"When you fight a fire, it's really chaos that's going on, but it's organized chaos. ... No two fires are alike," said Sullivan.
Not all equipment is for fighting fires alone. Each station houses an ambulance, maintained and paid for through the Waterford Ambulance Service. In addition, the stations house equipment for sucking water out of basements, fanning out fumes, and other hazards.
At Oswegatchie Fire Company, a Tactical Support vehicle looks more like a fortress than a mobile communication center. The vehicle is used to compress air into most of the town's firefighter air packs and houses maps and radio equipment, which run on four frequencies.
In large-scale emergency, the entire region's emergency response could be coordinated from the unit, said Chief Jeffrey Lathrop.
Buildings
Anecdotally, the fire companies said that although they've had to throw money into their buildings in the past, today they aren't looking at expensive renovations for a long time.
Cohanzie recently re-sided, installed new windows, finished its floors, fixed the roof and touched up the paint job for about $150,000. Quaker Hill, which once had its second floor condemned when a wall began to bow out, completely switched out wood for aluminum when it reconstructed the second story.
The fire chiefs all said that, over all, they could confidently say that they don't expect to come forward with major renovations for a while. ...that is, except in the case of Jordan.
Jordan, which recently lost insurance for a number of months because of a bowing wall, is looking for a new firehouse in a building which is not only registered as historic, but is also falling apart.
In the building's basement, where most activities are held and volunteers sleep, water seeps into a locked door that holds that company's electrical room. Inside the room, mold is visible on every surface.
The holes, said Sullivan, have been filled many times before.
Upstairs in the building's 1980 addition, water spots on the ceiling attest to a leaky roof and condensation covers the windows. Those holes, too, keep coming back, said Sullivan.
The building has no preventative maintenance program, per say, Sullivan said, but the members check up on the building every week.
Sullivan blamed politics for the status of the firehouse.
"The Fire Commission has to be more proactive than reactive," he said, referring to an ongoing power struggle between the commission and the town's boards.
Sullivan would like a new building, with larger bays and preferably down near the corner of Avery Lane and Great Neck Road. He said the bays are so small that the trucks need to be pulled out before volunteers can hop aboard. The building's location makes it difficult to see and a traffic light hasn't stopped traffic from flying by during a call, he said.
A few of the town's other fire stations, used to their independent status, wondered aloud why consolidation was being studied for what they see as a one station problem.
"The only question really is Jordan," Hayes said.
Henderson thinks that after a number of requests came before the town all at once, for additions that were all built around 1980, the issue became overblown.
"A lot of the departments are putting in for it at the same time and the town is feeling it," he said.