Tri-City Duty Crew moving forward after approval from Arnold Council

The formation of the Tri-City Duty Crew, a joint crew of firefighters to cover daylight fire calls in New Kensington, Arnold and Lower Burrell, cleared another hurdle toward becoming a reality.

Arnold Council approved an ordinance to establish an agreement with the other two cities.

It followed that action by voting to approve the intergovernmental cooperation agreement with the other two cities, both of which have already ratified it.

According to the fire chiefs, the plan would pool resources from Arnold, New Kensington and Lower Burrell volunteer fire departments to staff fire stations during daylight hours, addressing the limited availability of daytime volunteers, and to improve response times to incidents.

Brennan Sites, chief of Lower Burrell No. 3, said the chiefs will meet with Westmoreland County 911 again to finalize having pagers updated with the new Tri-City tone to activate the departments in emergencies.

The chiefs will also meet among themselves to develop a plan to integrate how the duty crew will be staffed and how it will function, Sites said.

“We want to get this done because of the importance of responding in a timely manner,” said New Kensington Fire Chief Ed Saliba Jr.

Volunteerism is down, Saliba said, especially during daylight hours, when many people are working. Saliba didn’t have to look too far for an example of the crew’s need: New Kensington volunteers, as well as others in the Alle-Kiski Valley, responded to a two-alarm house fire in Tarentum on Tuesday that claimed the lives of two dogs and displaced residents.

“That response wasn’t bad, but we want to see what we can do to better those times,” Saliba said.

“This is about helping the citizens.”

Sites hopes to have the framework of the plan up and running early next year.

“We’re still very excited we’re moving forward,” he said.