By Joanie Baker
Messenger-Inquirer
OWENSBORO, Ky. — Long before buildings had sprinklers or smoke detectors and houses were all built with wood-burning stoves, Ed Welsh was driving one of Owensboro’s first motorized fire trucks to extinguish between three and four fires a day.
At the age of 90, Welsh is the oldest Owensboro Fire Department retiree in the city, and while the department prepares to celebrate its 140th anniversary (there’s debate as to whether this is the department’s 140th or 141st anniversary), Welsh looks back to times when there was no such thing as air packs, and rescues were made with large trampolinelike nets.
“Things really have changed a lot,” said Welsh, who was handed a helmet in 1939. “We had two great big trucks, one with the steering wheel on the wrong side.”
Shortly after Owensboro was chartered as a city, a 10-member fire department was established in 1866 with a fire chief who ran the unit out of a rented house, Assistant Chief John Vessels said.
For years, trucks were pulled through town by the kind of horse power that ate hay instead of fuel.
Eventually the number of workers grew with the city, and Station No. 1 found its first official home sandwiched between City Hall and the Owensboro Police Department at Fourth and St. Ann streets. The two-story building had a hayloft for the horse’s feed and was complete with a fireman’s pole for quick slides from the sleeping quarters.
At a time before dispatchers’ tones told firefighters where they were needed, a steam whistle from the roof of the Owensboro Water Works would indicate which end of town a fire was burning by sounding a different number of whistles.
A line of changes
By the time Welsh was strapped into a pair of rubber boots, the department had expanded into two stations. The engines were then propelled by gasoline, but the water was still pumped using soda acid that, when added to the water in the hoses, would cause enough pressure to allow the lines to spray an area.
Welsh, who weaved the large trucks through Owensboro 28 out of the 30 years he was a firefighter, said the trucks aren’t the only thing that have come a long way over time. He said when he first started, he only received a handed-down helmet, boots and a coat to protect his body from the falling embers and burning flames he encountered several times each day. That was all the department had -- and it was all the firefighters “needed,” he said.
“I’ll never forget my first fire,” Welsh said. “The house was full of smoke, there were no lights to see where you were walking and I stumbled on a body.”
A training area was eventually built during Welsh’s tenure. The training included jumping from the tower into a net for practice, but the retiree said he once hit the round net wrong and thought he was paralyzed.
Despite safety risks, Welsh said there was always a love of the job.
For less than $100 a month and while working 24 hours on, 24 hours off, Welsh and other firefighters would take turns sleeping downstairs by the phone to answer a dispatcher’s call. The on-call firefighter would then “punch out” a button that not only interrupted the dreams taking place in the loft but opened the garage doors and turned all the lights on as well.
At one point, stations No. 1 and No. 2 were both operating out of the building on St. Ann and Fourth streets. The streets had not been made two-way roads yet, and station No. 1 would respond to calls at one end of the city, while station No. 2 would cover the other.
Welsh said the men’s Dalmatian somehow always knew which station was responding.
“That dog always knew what truck to get on,” Welsh said. “He would watch the men come down and would always get on the right truck until that old dog finally got so fat he couldn’t do it anymore. Everybody fed him out of that kitchen.”
On many summer evenings, firefighters could be seen sitting outside the station, but at night, Welsh said the station became quite the local hangout.
“Before (station) Number 2 got the first TV, all the old men in the neighborhood used to come down and play cards at night,” Welsh said. “They’d have three to four tables going playing ... and we listened to the radio or sometimes played baseball at Number 4. ...”
Throughout the city, about 15 pull boxes, much like today’s fire alarm levers, were on the corners of city blocks for residents to alert the department of a fire. While this was advanced technology, Welsh said he remembers responding to one pull box near a downtown tavern just about every Saturday night.
At the time, there was no way of knowing who had activated the alarm, but Welsh said he always had his theories.
With improvements in building inspections and standards for new homes to include smoke detectors, Welsh said the department has come a long way from fighting fires five times a day.
“When I went back I went out to look at all that equipment,” Welsh said. “I told them, ‘You all got those two new fire trucks and don’t have any fires.’ ”
The next rung up the ladder
Former Chief Randall Martin recalls coming on the Owensboro Fire Department at a time when the truck cabs weren’t enclosed and “you would hold on to the rail with one hand and get dressed with the other.”
When Martin started in 1953, the department only had two air packs, and use was discouraged because there was no way to refill them.
“Your lungs were your air packs,” Martin said. “If you had a big fire, you’d spit this old black stuff up for a week. We didn’t know any better. I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess.”
During his 37 years as a firefighter, Martin said he saw many changes in safety, such as always having the same number of firefighters outside of a fire as those inside.
“When I went on, everyone went for themselves; you just followed the captain,” he said. “There was no one looking out for you, and you didn’t know how many were inside a building.”
Martin remembers the ridges in the station floor that were originally used to help the horses “take off” as they pulled trucks to emergencies.
With his grandson, Jake Martin, following in his boot steps as a firefighter, Martin attends the department’s annual retiree dinner for the homecoming and chance to tell old stories.
“I was looking at pictures from 1953, and there were only about seven of us left,” Martin said. "...but we still see each other every now and then.”
Martin remembers the station first getting air conditioning.
“When we first got AC, the old buildings were hot and we wanted AC for the kitchen,” Martin said, adding that the firefighters were turned down repeatedly. “So we invited the chief and assistant chief for dinner and we shut all the windows and turned on the stove. We got it up to about 100 degrees. The next day they ordered us AC.”
While the training was minimal before a firefighter went into action, Martin said the familylike atmosphere of a fire department helped get the new guys through.
“I remember there was one individual who took me under his wing,” Martin said. "... everybody did that later, you looked after someone. I always had a soft spot for him.”
Flames burn on
The Owensboro Fire Department has made huge advancements in safety, equipment and training, Battalion Chief Steve Leonard said.
Firefighters are required to complete hours of training with new turnout gear fitted to their own bodies before they ever hop on a big red truck.
Since 2006, firefighters have been responding to medical emergency calls in addition to fires, requiring all of them to become certified emergency medical technicians.
Even though the community has become more aware of fire safety from public outreach by the department, firefighters still respond to many dangerous situations such as confined space and water rescues, Leonard said.
Leonard and Assistant Chief Bill Van Winkle said through all the advancements, the love, desire and brotherhood of the job has stayed the same.
“Even with all the changes in equipment, safety and training, it would all be useless without the courage and bravery of firefighters today, which is just the same as it was 140 years ago,” Van Winkle said.
Copyright 2007 Messenger-Inquirer
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News