As Hempfield pushes to unite fire department, stations grapple with future

Capt. Steve Kohl won’t miss worrying about keeping the lights on at the Midway-St. Clair Volunteer Fire Department.

After putting the question to a vote, the majority of his station’s 20 members made up their minds — Midway-St. Clair would “go all in” and become a nonchartered fire station in Hempfield.

This means the township will manage Midway-St. Clair’s property and cover all its expenses.

“It will let us concentrate more on the training aspect and responding to calls,” Kohl said. “We won’t have to worry about the bills, paying the electric and the gas and keeping the lights on, and we won’t have to worry about getting the donations that we do.”

Midway-St. Clair will be the second of Hempfield’s 11 fire stations to come under the township’s wing. The station expects to keep its name, though it may also receive a station number.

“They’re not going to take the history or the identity away from each station,” Kohl said.

The township is renewing its push to invite more stations to become nonchartered, township Manager Aaron Siko said.

The goal, Siko said, is to push for a regional fire service that can provide a sufficient emergency response across the township’s 80 square miles.

“That’s not to say that we’re here to … close anyone or shut them down,” he said. “We’re trying to form one Hempfield Fire Department.”

Siko and fire Chief Anthony Kovacic plan to lead a community forum in March for members of Hempfield’s fire stations in order to answer their questions and dispel lingering doubts about the process of becoming nonchartered.

“I hope that we have a good showing from stations to get the information that they’re looking for about this process. Hopefully the township can move forward with more companies coming in,” Kohl said.

‘A no-brainer’

The captain at North Hempfield Fire Department Station 501,Chad Stoup, said going all in with the township was a no-brainer for his station.

North Hempfield was the first Hempfield station to become nonchartered. The station building received a $1.8 million refurbishment last year to bring it up to code and to repurpose some rooms that were previously used for fundraiser events.

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Handing the reins to the township in 2021 was a relief, Stoup said.

“The biggest burden previously would have been the administrative work that goes into operations,” he said. “That would take people’s time away from their families and time away from training for fire-related stuff.”

Since becoming nonchartered, the station’s 15 to 20 firefighters worry less about paying the bills and spend more energy on training and fighting fires.

“Guys are actively looking for classes to take now,” Stoup said. “They can do online learning, the new building has a fitness center where they can work out, they can clean equipment and the apparatus. There’s no more need to worry about scrubbing the floors or washing dishes or preparing for a fish fry.”

He and the other firefighters had questions, Stoup said, but the station feels the township has kept its promise to let the station retain its identity.

“Each station has to look at their own thoughts independently. There’s a lot of different versions of fire departments and fire companies throughout the township,” Stoup said. “At the time that North Hempfield made the decision to go in, it was a very good fit for us. … There’s no complaints from any of my guys, nobody’s second-guessing their thoughts. It’s been a very positive interaction.”

Mixed opinions

But not all of Hempfield’s volunteer fire stations are on board with the idea.

Hempfield No. 2 Fire Department was close to becoming a nonchartered station in 2022, Capt. Dave Vinkler said, but the station pulled out at the last minute.

“We didn’t want to give up all of our assets, and then in the future not be able to retain those assets if the department fell through,” Vinkler said.

“We didn’t want to give them everything we had at the time without a promise — some kind of guarantee that they were going to give us what they told us,” he said. “If that fell through, if for some reason the supervisors — current or in the future — decided the direction this was headed wasn’t the direction we wanted to continue to go, we wanted to be able to retain our assets and our property.”

The township was not able to commit to this in writing, Vinkler said.

The Adamsburg Fire Department has been exploring the nonchartered station model for about a year, said President Ken Wees.

But, like Hempfield No. 2, the station’s members felt they needed more assurances from the township before agreeing to hand over management.

“There are certain things we need to see before we commit,” Wees said, declining to elaborate on the additional securities the station would like to receive from the township.

The Bovard Fire Department has no interest in being managed by the township, said Executive Officer Greg Saunders.

“Out of the 11 companies in the township, we’ll probably be the last to join in,” Saunders said.

The concern lies in the station’s relationship with the community.

“We’ve been there for 80 years last year,” he said. “We’ve been doing things for our town other than firefighting.”

Maintaining station identity

Since its inception, the Bovard Fire Department has maintained a veterans’ memorial, baseball field, pavilion and a social club that hosts community events.

In his 48 years at the station, Saunders has fixed bikes for local children and helped families move heavy items in and out of their homes.

“People know that they can come down here if they need help with anything,” he said. “That’s what I’m afraid of losing if we become, for lack of a better word, a corporate entity.”

The township has no intention of stripping the stations’ individual identities, Siko said.

“We have a lot of fire stations that put Santa on a truck and go out during Christmas and things like that,” he said. “What we want to do is we want to consolidate that effort as the Hempfield Fire Department across our entire community.

“It’s not just a matter of one of the 10 stations and the neighborhoods that they’re in, but certainly operating as one Hempfield Fire Department.”

Saunders understands why switching to township management would be beneficial to some stations, like North Hempfield.

“They were just a group of firefighters from the general area,” he said. “They didn’t really have a community. For them, it made sense for the township to take over all of the headaches.”

Looking to the future

Even Bovard has faced its share of challenges. With membership dwindling every year and firefighters struggling to find night shift jobs, it can be hard to get enough people out on daytime calls, Saunders said.

But Saunders is confident in the station’s ability to handle their finances in-house with support from the township.

“(We’ve) been able to continue to run our company. We bought a new engine in 2020 for a quarter of a million dollars, and we paid it off last month,” Saunders said. “We’re doing OK. We’re not rich by any means, but we’re very frugal.”

At Carbon Fire Department, the station’s veteran firefighters are hesitant about becoming nonchartered, said Capt. Jordan Ashbaugh.

“They worked very hard to get that fire station to where they’re at. Is it going to be very hard to relinquish that? I believe so,” he said. “That is just the mindset of somebody that has put in maybe 30, if not better, years with that fire service.”

The offer is more appealing to up-and-coming firefighters prioritizing their training, Ashbaugh said.

“The certain levels that these young firefighters have to go through — the hours are into the hundreds as far as getting to certain levels of participation,” he said.

Firefighters are required to complete about four hours of training per month, Ashbaugh said — closer to six for officers.

“If that’s all we have to focus on is answering fire calls and training and not have to worry about a bingo or selling tickets … if (the township) would have approached me with that at 18, I would have signed it up.”

Carbon’s captain said the station needs to take some kind of action to address issues with the volunteer fire department system, Ashbaugh said.

“We need to take the appropriate steps to ensure that public safety is being handled,” he said. “If we sat back and did nothing and played the status quo card, then we’re doing everybody a disservice because there are issues and challenges (with the fire department system).”

Efforts like the forum will help the township assess the current state of the volunteer fire service system and plan for how it will unfold in the future, Kovacic said.

“We’ve got to make sure that we’re ahead of the curve,” he said. “There are issues with delivering that fire protection right now in the areas that we know of, but we’re about growth and this community is about growth.”