By Cody Francis
The Tribune-Review
LATROBE, Maine — Latrobe fire Chief John Brasile knows his fire department is one of the fortunate ones.
A city-funded department, Latrobe gets tens of thousands of dollars budgeted every year for expenses — including salaries, maintenance, uniforms and fuel.
Volunteer departments, however, must raise their own money to pay for the majority of what they need to serve their communities. With fuel prices higher this spring and summer than last year, that task has become a little more difficult, said Brian Schultheis, chief of the Lloydsville Volunteer Fire Department.
With the average price of a gallon of gasoline at $3.59 and the average price of diesel fuel, which is used by most fire engines, at $3.89 a gallon, the costs have left the volunteer departments looking for ways to cut back.
“One thing that we do is try to cut back on what we use the vehicles for,” Schultheis said. “On incidents where we don’t need to move more than one truck, we only move one truck. If we’re going to be someplace for an extended period of time and we don’t need to use our lights, we shut the trucks down.”
Schultheis said the gas prices have also forced his department to cut down on equipment upgrades.
“We’ve been forced to look elsewhere for cuts as well. We might not upgrade something this year that we normally would, or wait an extra year to buy new equipment,” he said.
Schultheis said depending on the frequency of calls, his department can spend anywhere from $350 to $700 in a month on fuel. With this spring’s storms, he said his department was constantly on call.
“Those storms that came through, that ran us ragged,” he said. “We put in about 20 calls during a 24-hour shift. We would try to do whatever we could to open the roads back up and then move to the next one.”
Expenses were getting so high for the Bradenville Volunteer Fire Department that they decided to combine two older vehicles — a 1981 pump truck and a 1992 rescue truck — into one, which debuted on Saturday.
“We pay for our own, all of our own utility costs, maintenance costs and upkeep on the trucks,” said Mark Piantine, Bradenville fire chief. “Now, by making one truck out of two trucks, we can cut insurance costs, maintenance costs and fuel costs.”
While the Latrobe Fire Department was budgeted $16,000 for fuel this year, Brasile said he is following the lead of the volunteer departments and cutting back as well.
“Even though our (fuel) is paid for, it comes from the taxpayers and I don’t want to be one to waste,” Brasile said. “We’ll only send one or two trucks for a wire down instead of three.
“I’m under the gun. I have to answer to city administrators and have to crunch numbers. There’s only so much we can use for fuel.”
Brasile said he has also decided to help other departments by canceling many calls for outside assistance if they are not needed.
“If the incident isn’t critical, what I do is cancel them off because they don’t have the same luxury as we do,” Brasile said. “They have to raise funds to pay for fuel. It’s just me trying to look out for their financial interests too.”
Brasile said last summer, his department was spending about $1,400 to $1,500 a month on fuel. With his cuts this year, he said he has fuel expenses cut in half, shelling out only $700 to $800 a month.
Piantine said his department has tried to ramp up its fundraising efforts, from holding extra sub sales to hosting bingo all this week at the Derry Agricultural Fair, but that can only bring in so much additional money.
“We try to fundraise, but everybody and their brother is doing the same thing,” Piantine said. “With summertime, people have this fundraiser going on, all of the summer fairs, church events, we can’t compete with those things.”
Piantine added that while the fundraisers help pay for the department’s fuel, they don’t pay for the fuel volunteers use to get to the fire hall.
“The big thing is that guys that live farther away are not coming on calls because a lot of them end up being false alarms,” he said. “That hurts your manpower. Guys are using their own fuel to get here, and as soon as you get here the call gets canceled. Guys don’t put up with it.”
Schultheis said while fuel costs may be a difficult hurdle for most volunteer departments, it will never deter his department from responding when needed.
“We will always be there,” Schultheis said. “As long as we have the manpower, we’re going to respond and do what needs to be done. We may have to sacrifice in other areas, but we will do what we have to.”
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