2020 Wexford VFC Recap

2020 is in the books, and while we understand most would like to forget and move on, here is a short review of our activities for the year.

Incidents

228 Tower Operates at Franklin Park Chimney Fire

We finished 2020 with 417 total calls. This total is a decrease from previous years, likely due to a lower call volume during COVID-19 stay at home orders.  There were 11 structure fire responses. Many of those fires were significant in nature including a large commercial structure fire in Ambridge. One of the structure fires was in Pine. It was a commercial building fire that was controlled by the building’s fire sprinkler system. Here is a breakdown of incident totals by major incident type category:

False Alarm & False Call- 104
Fire- 39
Good Intent Call- 115
Hazardous Condition (No Fire)- 38
Overpressure Rupture, Explosion, Overheat(no fire)- 2
Rescue- 76
Service Call- 34
Severe Weather & Natural Disaster- 9
Total-417

Our average response time for incidents requiring an emergency response was 8 minutes and 3 seconds. We are proud of this statistic as national averages for volunteer fire companies are typically over 10 minutes.

Training

Spring Time Master Stream Drill

Covid created a difficult year for training as many local fire academy classes were canceled, and in-house training was limited at times. Members still worked hard to maintain their readiness through all training options that were available logging over 1000 personnel hours in training. Click this link to learn about the training our members go through to become firefighters at the Allegheny County Fire Academy.

We provide weekly training drills on Tuesday evenings, and various other fire and rescue training classes in-house. Members also attend basic and advanced level firefighter training classes at the Allegheny County Fire Academy in North Park as well as classes offered by Butler County Community College and other resources. All training is sponsored and paid for by the organization.

Public Relations and Recruitment

Firefighters Model Donated Face Masks

Our volunteers greatly appreciated the outpouring of support from the community. You may remember the community parades at the start of COVID-19 lockdown orders. We were amazed and touched by the show of support from everyone. The support continued throughout the year as we received numerous contributions from various meals and treats to masks to monetary donations. Our firefighters are very proud to serve the community and the show of support always means so much to the morale of our organization.

Many volunteer fire companies struggled with recruitment in 2020. We were very fortunate to have 13 new members join in positions from junior member to interior firefighter. We are always in need of new members and encourage anyone with an interest to learn more and apply for membership. Visit our recruitment page to check out what we have to offer and connect with our membership committee. They will be able to assist you through the application process.

As we enter into our 100th year of service, we look forward to working to protect the community and thank everyone for their support.