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| Firefighter Frankie DeBettencourt scrubs down the front of an engine after helping a homeowner with a flooded basement. |
On a recent Monday morning, the fire station was bustling with activity. Nearly a dozen firefighters returned from a call and immediately began putting away equipment, washing the trucks, filling out paperwork, all the while laughing and joking with each other. Once the work is done, they disappear, one by one, back to their “real” jobs. Their easy camaraderie is evident, but their playful manner belies the professionalism and discipline required of Harvard’s all-volunteer fire department.
Today’s call is for a flooded basement. The owner is away, but someone has called in to report burst pipes. Ten firefighters have shown up for the call, a typical daytime response, which Fire Chief Bob Mignard said is the envy of many other all-volunteer forces. “Many other departments would be really impressed with eight showing up, but we would be wondering ‘where is everybody?’ That’s something that’s pretty special about this department. Full-time departments wonder how we do it.” Night calls generate an even better turnout: nearly the entire department shows up for most calls. “If they are home, they respond,” Mignard said.
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| Firefighters Oona Aldrich and Sean Murphy wash down the pump truck, Engine 4. |
The on-call duty officer alone can handle many calls that come in, for example, a check on a carbon monoxide alarm. If a situation requires a greater response, all firefighters are paged and the town air horn sounds a signal, using a code to indicate the location of the incident. What unfolds next is a carefully planned sequence of events that begins as soon as the first responder arrives at the station. He or she conducts a quick “size-up” of the situation to determine the required resources to meet the call. Within minutes more firefighters arrive and the trucks and equipment are dispatched in a specific order. Engine 3, the “scout,” always rolls first, followed by Engine 2, then the reel truck and tanker. If required, Engine 1 can be dispatched from Still River. Each truck has a specific purpose and the firefighters know exactly what to do when they arrive at the scene, whether it is setting up a safe work zone around an accident site or establishing a water supply source at the scene of a fire. Having a clearly defined protocol and well-trained firefighters who are cross-trained on all equipment speeds response time and eliminates confusion.
Key to the success of Harvard’s fire department is the dedication and commitment of its 26 firefighters. The group is a diverse bunch—24 men and 2 women: some are self-employed business owners, others are executives, professionals, retirees, tradesmen, and more. One is a high school student, although the average age is about 41 years old, and most have many years’ experience in the department. While firefighters get paid for time spent on calls—twice a year, in July and December—they spend many more hours training and supporting the department for no pay. “They don’t do it for the money. The money is nice, but it doesn’t pay the bills,” Mignard said.
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| Lieutenant Rob Warren, a 17-year member of the fire department, fills out an incident report after a call. |
There is a strong family component for many who join the department. Lt. Rob Warren, a firefighter here for 17 years, is the son of Peter Warren, the former fire chief who retired after 40 years at the end of 2004 and who has several relatives who are in, or have been in, the department. “I have been chasing fire trucks since the day I was born. I have been fighting brush fires since I was old enough to walk. I just get satisfaction out of helping somebody,” Warren said.
Last year, the department responded to 246 calls for service. Trucks and equipment were dispatched for 172 of those calls, while the remaining calls were handled by an on-call duty officer. Some weeks there are no calls at all, while other weeks will see much more action. Several times a month they are called to Route 2 to respond to accident scenes, and beginning in the next few weeks they can expect to see a number of good-sized brush fires. The bulk of their calls, however, are what Mignard refers to as “smells and bells,” or investigations into strange smells, such as gas, and responding to triggered alarms.
Training is a critical component of the fire department’s success and it is one of the things that Mignard is most proud of. He said that the training was flagging a bit when he took the helm, but has recently been rejuvenated as he has emphasized and encouraged the people in his department to take more firefighting courses. The training budget was $6,500 when he first started, but has been reduced.
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Chaser Bill Barton hoses down Engine 3. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
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Prospective firefighters begin their experience as “chasers.” Currently there are three chasers in the Harvard Fire Department. Chasers respond to calls, help out wherever they can, and start learning about what is involved. This stage generally lasts at least six months, but can be up to a year or two, and gives the chasers and the department a chance to see if they are cut out for the job. If the department determines that the chaser is a good fit, it extends an application and probationary membership. At this point, the probationary member gets gear and a radio and is able to ride on the fire trucks. The new member is also assigned a mentor and begins more formalized training in the fundamentals of firefighting. Probationary members undergo a minimum of 15 hours of training in the department, learning about the specific functionality of each piece of equipment and truck, role of the officers, the order of response protocol, and so forth. “We push them really hard,” Mignard said. If the members continue, they then become full-fledged firefighters. Additional training is available and encouraged. The Fire Academy in Stow offers many courses, including a very rigorous 185-hour course taken over a six-month period. A number of current firefighters have already completed this training and three are completing the course this week.
Harvard’s fire department also provides training to local schools, through the Student Awareness and Fire Education, or S.A.F.E. program. Oona Aldrich is the S.A.F.E. director and she undertakes her role with passion and enthusiasm. Mignard said of the program, “It is one of the best in the state and is recognized by the Department of Fire Services as being a model for what a small department can do.” Children in preschool through middle school receive training from Aldrich, who teaches them fire safety at various times in their schooling and actually tracks who has been taught what. This way she knows who has received “Stop, Drop, and Roll” training, for example, and who has not, and she can target her next training message appropriately. Her strategy is to teach kids small pieces of information at regular intervals over longer periods of time, rather than dumping one large program on them all at once. Her passion in large part comes from having been in no less than three house fires when she was younger, and finding out later that she made a lot of mistakes in those situations. For example, firefighters were upset when they found her trying to rescue her pet bird at one fire. “I didn’t know then that a house fire doubles in size every minute! You can’t take time for chasing pets. I wanted to keep other people from making my mistakes,” she said.
“Massachusetts in general has one of the strongest fire prevention codes in the country,” Mignard said, and is working to develop a more comprehensive fire prevention program. “Ideally we want to fire prevent ourselves out of a job. In Europe, a significant portion of their budgets, say 30 to 40 percent, is aimed specifically at fire prevention and fire education. Here in the U.S., it’s peanuts. We run our program in Harvard—funded entirely through grants—with $2,000.”
The budget for the entire department currently is about 1.1 percent of the town’s total budget. There is a warrant article for $15,000 going to this month’s Town Meeting to do a maintenance refurbishment of the tanker, but in general the capital plan is severely limited due to lack of funds. Mignard said that he is frustrated but philosophical about the lack of money, acknowledging that there just aren’t enough town funds to go around. He said that the firefighters work hard to take care of the equipment they have, but things wear out over time. Engine 4 is 23 years old and has been refurbished once already. His bright red Chevy Tahoe has 80,000 miles on it and was due to be replaced this year, but it looks like he will be driving it for a few more years. He embraces the need to be fiscally responsible, he said, but does worry that if the limits are pushed too far a necessary piece of equipment may not be available in an emergency.
The firefighters like the comaraderie, the excitement, the challenge, the social connections, and the ability to help other people. It is especially gratifying to be able to do so in a small town like Harvard. As Aldrich said upon returning from the flooded basement call, “That is one of the great things about being in a small town. If we were in Boston, the firefighters would have shown up, turned off the water, and left. We were able to pump out the water, move out the furniture, vacuum the carpets …”
Then she and the rest of the firefighters grabbed the brushes and hoses, and laughing and chatting the whole time, cleaned off the fire trucks and put everything back in service for the next run.
See related article on Fire Chief Bob Mignard.