By James Buescher
The Intelligencer Journal/New Era
LANCASTER, Pa. — For years, western Lancaster County’s fire companies have been local operations, relying on community members to hold fundraisers — such as chicken barbecues — to purchase needed equipment and, of course, to fight fires.
Now, however, a new initiative being pioneered in Millersville and surrounding areas could alter the way that local volunteer fire companies operate — namely, by merging four area volunteer fire companies into a single entity.
Local officials plan to present details of the new regional merger plan at a special meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Millersville Borough building, 100 Municipal Drive, behind the Barn Door Restaurant in Millersville.
“The purpose of the meeting is to put forth our recommendations on the merger to the public. We were organized to put together a study, and that’s what we produced,” said Russell Guthrie, chairman of the joint task force overseeing the merger.
“A lot of communities across the state are facing the same problems we are,” Guthrie said. “What we’re doing is trying to come up with a plan to keep our local fire companies feasible.”
Beginning in 2005, representatives of Millersville Borough and Manor Township, as well as those representing the volunteer fire companies of West Lancaster, Millersville Borough, Washington Boro and Highville, began meeting to discuss issues they had in common. Those issues include retaining fire company members, ways of raising funds and dealing with state training requirements.
As a consequence of those discussions, the four fire companies began to see the necessity of a merger, according to previous news reports. They voted in June 2007 to form a single fire company responsible for fighting blazes along a corridor stretching from Lancaster city’s western suburbs all the way to the Susquehanna River.
Forming a joint 13-member task force made up of representatives from the two municipalities and four fire companies (Guthrie, for example, serves as the citizen representative for Manor Township), officials began formulating a plan to accomplish the merger. Details of that plan will be presented Thursday.
Phil Lastowski, a Millersville Borough councilman and task force member, said that one problem many local fire companies are facing is a drop in support. In previous years, especially in rural areas, firefighters could count on the help of local Amish and other Plain Sect community members to assist firefighters at blazes.
But because of new regulations put in place by the state, the only people now allowed to help put out a fire are those who have received properly certified training.
“People are busier these days, and they can’t help out with fundraisers,” Lastowski said. “And with the bad economy, folks just aren’t showing up the way they used to for chicken dinners at the fire hall.
“Also, employers used to let their workers leave to go and fight fires, but today that’s almost unheard of.”
Other problems, according to Guthrie, are a drop in volunteerism among younger firefighters, an aging population of current firefighters and cuts in donations from local municipalities trying to stay in the black by trimming budgets.
“Residents fighting our own fires with our garden hoses just isn’t going to work,” Lastowski said. “We have to find a way to keep our local fire departments operating. Having this consolidation would solve a lot of our problems ... . What we’re planning on presenting is a plan to show that doing this is not only necessary, but also feasible and cost-effective.”
Copyright 2010 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.