Copyright 2006 Tribune Review Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
By TOM YERACE
Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pa.)
Firefighters are used to calls for help, but the Murrysville Volunteer Fire Company recently responded to one from a long way off: the storm-ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The department learned through Dan Lawrence, pastor of the Murrysville Alliance Church, that a volunteer fire company in Waveland, Miss., lost its equipment during Hurricane Katrina and was in desperate need of gear.
“We just got a federal grant, and we got new gear,” said Ted Heider, president of the Murrysville department. “We were putting our old gear in storage for new members, and he asked us if we would be generous enough to donate our fire equipment to the department in Waveland, and we said we would.”
The department shipped out more than 20 sets of turnout gear — helmets, boots, coats and pants — to Waveland, Heider said.
Heider said he and Bill Yant, Murrysville’s emergency management coordinator, planned to drive the equipment to Mississippi. But then a local trucking company, Yellow Freight, offered to haul the equipment at no charge.
David Garcia, chief of the Waveland Fire Department, said the 15-member department appreciated the donation. He said Waveland, located right on the Gulf of Mexico, was “ground zero” for Katrina.
“We are the hardest-hit city on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” Garcia said. “We had only about a dozen homes that were not damaged, and, unfortunately, we lost 23 lives.”
He said of the 3,420 developed parcels of land in the town, 2,890 were “100 percent damaged” by the storm, which sent a surge of water 12 miles inland. Garcia said only one city building left standing, Fire Station No. 2, is so badly damaged that officials plan to raze it.
“Right here where I am sitting, we had a 30-foot surge,” he said. “We’re probably half a mile from the beach. What didn’t get blown away by wind went under water.
“We went from emergency responders ourselves to victims,” Garcia said, adding that the firefighters lost their vehicles and personal possessions as well as their fire equipment.
“It helped a lot because a lot of guys didn’t have any,” Garcia said of the turnout gear. He said whatever his department does not use will be distributed to volunteer fire departments also hard-hit.
Garcia said his department has a firefighting presence again thanks to donations such as Murrysville’s. He said eight trucks were donated by fire departments in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and New Jersey, but they were older vehicles, and his department only could keep three running.
But it’s been enough to respond to at least two fires in trailers provided as housing to residents, he said.
There is no record of just how many departments from Pennsylvania have made similar donations, according to J.C. Tedorski, secretary of the Western Pennsylvania Firemen’s Association, and Justin Fleming, a press officer for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. They said no agency has really tracked such donations.
“It probably is just happening on an individual basis,” Tedorski said. “There is nobody actually coordinating that donation effort, at least that I am aware of. Individual fire companies, on a routine basis, donate equipment to companies in need in the state and out of state.”
Rebuilding has been a slow process for everyone, according to Garcia, who said power was restored to Waveland in February, six months after Katrina hit. He only hopes his department is back on a firm footing to respond to calls like it did before Katrina.
Asked what his department now needs most, Garcia replied, “When you don’t have nothing, anything is important.”
Heider is hoping more departments throughout the state will respond.
“We are asking other departments that have extra equipment to send it down there,” Heider said. “That is our motto, to help others in their time of need, and Waveland is certainly in need.”
Fire departments interested in making donations can contact Waveland Fire Chief David Garcia directly by calling 228-467-6154.