
From the Publishers Desk
Volunteers Can Do Anything
Bank accounts in two countries that involve different rates of exchange, response through customs and training in one state and two provinces are all so unusual for a volunteer fire department that our editor just had to make this story (page 28) known to our readers— thanks to Past Chief John E. Treptow of the Hogansburg, N.Y., Volunteer Fire Department.
On top of this, the majority of the volunteers are Mohawk Indians who use English on department radios, but sometimes speak Mohawk in the firehouses. We have always found the volunteer fire service fascinating but this volunteer department on the border of Ontario, Quebec and New York is something else again. It all came about because the St. Regis Indian reservation is located one half in Canada and one half in New York. The fire department is an independent volunteer fire department contracting fire protection to three political areas.
The fire district takes in 48 square miles which is divided by three rivers—the St. Lawrence, the St. Regis and the Raquette. This makes for a wonderful water supply, as Chief Treptow puts it, but it creates the need for three separate fire stations to keep response time to a minimum.
A fire in this unusual fire department generates a considerable amount of paperwork, a time-consuming job not shared by other volunteer departments in the United States or Canada. The three-station reports have to be combined and then reports must be sent to United States and Canadian officials.
As we said above, we find the volunteer fire service (which makes up a good part of our readership) fascinating and endlessly so. Skipping to another part of this issue you will find the story of a 95-car railroad derailment (explosion, fires and all) in which a small-town fire department—volunteer—handled itself in a most professional manner. So professionally that with three violent explosions, there wasn’t even one injury.