April 2021 Wexford VFC Recap

Incidents

We finished April with 41 calls.  The two fire-related responses included an assist with a chimney fire in Valencia and a mulch fire at a commercial building in Pine. There were six motor vehicle crashes involving injuries in Pine including five in Pine and one in Marshall Township. Most other incidents involved alarm activations and various responses inside and outside Pine that were canceled before our units arrived on the scene.

Here is a breakdown of incident totals by major incident type category:

False Alarm & False Call- 7
Fire- 2
Good Intent Call- 20
Hazardous Condition- 5
Rescue- 6
Service Call- 1
Total-41

1ooth Anniversary

In observing our 100th Anniversary, we put the spotlight on life member Delores Voll. She was the first woman to be accepted as a firefighter in 1974. Women serving in traditional firefighting roles was not common, and often prohibited by many organizations up until late in the 20th century. Our organization was no exception but made the right choice to begin accepting women. Many dedicated women have served and continue to serve our organization.  Learn more about our history by clicking here.

We are proud to celebrate our 100th year of service to the community. With the uncertainty of COVID, we’re unsure if we’ll be able to celebrate this anniversary in person with the public. If things improve, we certainly hope to hold some type of public event to commemorate this milestone.

Training

We are pleased to report that four members have passed the Firefighter II certification through Butler County Community College. The Firefighter II certification requires a lot of pre-test training and preparation including vehicle rescue, hazardous materials, and building preplanning activities among many other tasks.

For weekly drills, members worked on developing muscle memory in handling the two common fire hose line sizes that we use- 1 3/4 inch and 2 1/2 inch diameter. Firefighters must be able to effectively handle the backpressure of a fire hose line, and often by themself as other firefighters on the crew feed hose into the building and maneuver it around corners. A 1 3/4 inch hose line has a backpressure up to 70 lbs whereas a 2 1/2 inch hose line has a back pressure of up to 99 lbs. Interested in learning more about what does into operating a fire service hose line, check out this video from fire nozzle manufacturer, Elkhart Brass.