Mill Hall Fire fights back: COVID closures, canceled classes, inconsistent schedules reasons why trainings not taking place
By Christopher Miller
MILL HALL – In light of recent events transpiring at the Mill Hall Borough council meeting last week, members of Mill Hall Volunteer Fire Company spoke to The Record Monday evening to share their side of the ordeal.
“It’s been two or three years since we started dealing with the borough on the ordinance issue,” Bill Strunk said. “When the borough put out the ordinance we didn’t have a chance to put our two cents into it.”
The ordinance in question requires firefighters to have certain training and certifications that comply with the borough citing for safety purposes.
“The trouble started with COVID and the state shut themselves down and canceled fire training,” Bill said, “and Mayor Bossertt was here, he told us that he would call and notify us if it were necessary for us to attend the safety meeting during the council meeting, but no one ever notified us to be there.”
The question of certifications was only for the line officers; to make sure that the chief, assistant chief, and others were properly trained for certain fire and rescue situations.
“Our side of this story was never seen by the people of the community,” Bill said. “The public only was able to see what comes out of the borough council meetings, so we are stating our case now.”
Don Grant, the Recording Secretary for the fire company, made known that they all endeavor to have their training, but some classes just aren’t available all of the time.
“With classes being cut off during COVID, and then trying to catch up, it has been difficult; some classes are assigned certain days and times, and not everyone can be available during those days and times to take a class, not with work and family schedules, there is no flexibility with many of the classes and times, so a year to receive the training that is required is definitely not enough time for some of the class cycles.”
Some county scheduled classes are even canceled entirely, simply because they do not meet a minimum number of county registrants for the course.
“We are definitely willing to get the necessary training we need, and endeavor to keep up to date on that training,” Don said.
The fire company officers also cited a lack of communication from borough officials as being a problem.
Don added, “There is a definite effort to micromanage and control the fire company who for decades have self-instituted firematic training and procedures for emergency response safety for themselves and the community.”
“If we need to come to a meeting to present certificates that is okay, but no one called us about coming to the meeting,” said firefighter Dan Duck, Sr. “We have a standard operating guidelines of procedures where people cannot just go out and do this (fight fires) without meeting qualifications due to fire company regulations.”
The fire company owns all of its own equipment, the building and the apparatus, with the borough only chipping in financially for liability insurance, and a small annual donation for which we provide proof of use.
“We are thankful that the borough helps us out with this and for other things, like cutting our grass and plowing our snow, and we let them use the trucks for flushing out the sewer lines, and for the pool, when they need it,” said Skip Fryer.
The fire hall also doubles as a community gathering place for events such as school banquets, a senior center, voting, sports team’s meetings and fund raising, bingo games almost every Friday night, community groups, and square and line dancing. “We are more than a community building, we are a community asset,” said Dan Duck, Sr. “There is only so much we can do as we are all volunteers,” Dan said. “We give our time freely to do the work needed to fundraise, hold events, the fisherman’s breakfast, fire prevention week, and truck-or-treat.”
“We also use our raised funds for the resources we purchase for the Mill Hall students for fire prevention week, and for the majority of the supplies for the Mill Hall community Truck-or Treat.” added Don.
The next borough council meeting takes place on Tuesday, December 19 at 7 PM. “If the community wants to show their support for their local fire company, please attend the meeting,” said Strunk.
As a correction to last week’s article, the fire company does not pay for the training packages – they are scheduled by the Volunteer Emergency Services Of Clinton County (VESOCC) and reimbursed from the county.
