By Jim Hook
The Public Opinion
CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — The oldest volunteer fire company in Chambersburg plans to remain in the borough and to work with the Chambersburg Fire Department, according to the volunteers’ top officer.
Friendship Engine & Hose Company is among five volunteer fire companies in the borough, but currently has no members certified to run with the borough’s professional firefighters. Three other companies do, and a fourth is working to comply with the borough rules.
Recently hired Chambersburg Emergency Services Chief William FitzGerald has given Friendship until Sept. 1 to qualify volunteers or face eviction from the McKinley Street Station. The group also has less than a month to find a new home for its fire truck.
Michael Winklbauer, a 30-year borough volunteer firefighter, said the discipline has been decades in the making.
Friendship President Preston Strayer said on Thursday, “We have provided volunteer fire service to the Borough of Chambersburg and the greater Chambersburg area for more than 200 years, and we will continue to do that as long as we are able. I want to sit down with the (Friendship) executive board to discuss what we need to do, and I want to maintain an open line of communication with the borough,”
Strayer said he was still digesting FitzGerald’s letter.
“I need to take this one step at a time,” he said. “I don’t want to rush into a reaction.”
FitzGerald said that Friendship has balked at complying with borough rules for firefighters for nearly two years. Friendship’s fire truck is an engine tanker, unnecessary in a borough that has an abundance of fire hydrants.
The borough will move its own ambulance and reserve fire engine into McKinley Station when Friendship’s engine tanker is gone, according to FitzGerald. He also plans repairs for the building, which the borough owns.
He said “that station is needed more now than ever” because of new homes built in recent years in south Chambersburg.
The borough stations a paid driver and borough fire truck at McKinley Station.
McKinley is shared by volunteers from Friendship and Good Will Fire companies. Junior Hose and Truck Company and the Cumberland Valley Fire Company provide manpower to the department’s headquarters station on North Second Street. Franklin Fire Company, whose primary responsibility is outside the borough, owns its own fire station and apparatus.
The borough went to a paid fire department in the mid-1970s and shrunk to two fire stations. The volunteer groups lost their individual fire houses and their equipment.
“This has been coming for 20 years,” said Michael Winklbauer, who’s volunteered for more than 30 years with the Chambersburg Fire Department. “This fire department has been on a downward spiral since 1986 or ’87.”
A long-time member of Junior Hose, Winklbauer said that borough leaders lowered the standards for volunteer firefighters over the years, so many of the best volunteers left.
Volunteers initially were allowed to run McKinley Station, but were unable to get the borough’s engine out on fire calls because they could not find people qualified to drive the apparatus, Winklbauer said. Their electrical repairs to the firehouse were substandard.
Friendship bought its own apparatus in an attempt to attract volunteers. The first was a rescue squad. The truck and the equipment in it were not properly maintained, Winklbauer said.
He said one incident illustrates the problem: A fire engine from McKinley responded to a barn fire in St. Thomas Township in the late 1980s. Nine volunteers were aboard a borough fire truck with a capacity of six. He told the volunteers that three of them would have to ride back with him or he would call police to enforce the limit. They abandoned the fire truck at the scene and rode with an acquaintance back to McKinley. Winklbauer returned with another firefighter to retrieve the engine. Later the volunteers went to Borough Manager Eric Oyer and successfully avoided discipline. Two of them were later charged with setting the barn fire.
“You need to work with the chief officers,” he said. “The fire department is like a military organization. You need to follow the chain of command. You don’t jump the chain of command.”
It’s not wrong that Friendship bought its own apparatus, but the company failed to coordinate the purchase with the borough fire department and its needs, Winklbauer said.
“The volunteers in Chambersburg have it better than any volunteer company in the county,” he said. “Chambersburg buys the equipment, pays for all the gear and pays for training. I don’t have to go out and do fundraising. I don’t have to do bingo a couple of times a month so we can buy a new fire truck.”
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