Cooperation, a key to modern firefighting
The art and science of fighting fire has changed dramatically over the past 150 years, but the most essential change may be in the culture of firefighters.
Cooperation, particularly on Martha's Vineyard, has replaced competition, and interdependence has overcome a traditional culture of territorial fire department independence.
Last Sunday afternoon was an example as the hulking aerial ladder machines of the Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, and Tisbury fire departments stalked tentatively down Kennebec and Circuit avenues, their basket ladders 75 to 100 feet in the air, peering over, around and between the buildings of downtown Oak Bluffs, planning strategy to make fire, the potential predator, their prey.
The onsite fire drill, first ever between the towns, was designed as a first step in a plan to chart the right positions for maximum reach and access to fires, should they occur, and to familiarize the mutual aid departments with the firefighting environment for maximum efficiency if the real thing occurs.
Photo by Ralph Stewart
Firefighting software
The departments also have new technology that will allow the information gathered in notebooks at the drill to be used to help create a software database available instantly to all Martha's Vineyard fire departments in the case of fire.
Mutual aid was not in vogue when many of the buildings in Oak Bluffs were new. In those days, particularly in big cities, firefighting was extremely competitive, when volunteer departments of men and horses raced down city streets, hauling their brightly decorated pumpers, to be first to the hydrant.
The Marquess of Queensbury was not a firefighter in the mid- to late-1800s. History records numerous tales of volunteer fire departments brawling for control of a hydrant while nearby buildings burned unchecked.
Not today. "Fire is the enemy," said Tony Ferriera, assistant chief of the Oak Bluffs Fire Department. "Fire expands exponentially, doubling and redoubling itself over a short time," he said, following a briefing session for a dozen firefighters from the three towns at the Oak Bluffs fire station before the drill.
Cooperation is key, agreed Jesse Steere, now a Tisbury volunteer after 25 years on the Oak Bluffs department, where he was a captain. "Firehouses, particularly larger mainland departments, have always been competitive," he said. "I'm sure it's improved after 9/11, but the rule always was 'never touch another station's equipment.'"
Martha's Vineyard is long on fire department volunteers and short on budget expenses. Our equipment inventory is similar to communities on the Cape and Nantucket.
What are the costs and benefits of shiny new fire trucks on Martha's Vineyard in recent years? Here's a look at the Martha's Vineyard volunteer staff, budgets, and equipment on Martha's Vineyard and some of the benefits firefighters see as a result.
There are 233 Island volunteer firefighters. Edgartown has 55 firefighters, Oak Bluffs 58, Vineyard Haven 44, Aquinnah 10, West Tisbury 40, and Chilmark 26.
Each unsalaried volunteer firefighter receives an annual stipend generally ranging from $500 to a few thousand dollars. Many volunteers personally supplement the stipend to buy additional gear, several firefighters report.
Martha's Vineyard has 21 fire engines, five each in Oak Bluffs, Tisbury, and Edgartown, including an aerial ladder truck in each town and four ladder trucks each. The three up-Island towns have two engines each, but no aerial trucks. The figures were compiled by Cape CodFD.com, a privately operated website dedicated to Cape and Islands fire departments.
In comparison, Nantucket has seven engines and one ladder unit. Most Cape towns average between four and eight units, according to an analysis of CapeCodFD.com figures.
The total annual budget for operating all the Martha's Vineyard fire departments is $1,050,984. By town, budgets are:
Oak Bluffs ($176,000), Edgartown ($291,184), Tisbury ($190,000), West Tisbury ($233,000), Chilmark ($131,000) and Aquinnah ($29,800).
It's money well spent, the chiefs said on Sunday. They point to the Café Moxie fire last July 4, as an example. While the financial loss to structures and business in Vineyard Haven from the Café Moxie fire and associated damage to Bunch of Grapes Bookstore was and is substantial, in the millions of dollars, chiefs from all three towns agreed that the losses could have been much greater.
Acknowledging that the $800,000 cost of Tisbury's new mega-pumper, nicknamed Bronto, raised eyebrows and some ire when proposed to town meeting four years ago, the outcome of the Bunch of Grapes fire alone may have justified the expense, said Tisbury fire Chief John Schilling, who added, "the equipment did the job it was designed to do: the bookstore survived and contiguous buildings were not fire damaged."
Today Island departments complement each other and seek to avoid redundancy. For example, each town has an emergency specialty such as a technical rescue team in Tisbury trained to work in confined and underground spaces, and dive teams in West Tisbury, Oak Bluffs, and Edgartown.
Cooperation is facilitated by the Dukes County communications center, which provides an Island-wide frequency for all police fire and emergency teams. "We are way ahead of many mainland departments simply in that regard. The existence of an Island-wide communications center was pivotal to getting an Island-wide federal homeland security grant," Tisbury fire Chief John Schilling said.
Tim Carroll, Chilmark's executive secretary, handled the granting process for Martha's Vineyard, Chief Schilling noted. The $30,000 homeland security grant is being used to install and integrate Firehouse, a software program for fire reporting for all Island towns through the communications center.
"The homeland security agency is pushing what they call "interoperability" - the ability of all emergency personnel to communicate from a single source - as we already do, thanks to the communications center," Chief Schilling said. "We are all working from a common platform of communication."
"We're lucky here: because we're an Island, we know each other and the various towns' equipment," Mr. Steere said, noting that Tisbury carries both four- and five-inch couplings to match the two hose sizes used by Island fire equipment.
That's important because Tisbury's pumper, a leviathan nicknamed "Bronto" is capable of hosing a fire while simultaneously pumping water to other equipment as well as directing a stream down from its 100-foot aerial ladder.
"We call it Bronto because when the four support legs are deployed and the ladder is up, it looks like a Brontosaurus," Mr. Steere said, noting Bronto's resources came in handy during the long, savage fire at the Bunch of Grapes bookstore last July Fourth on Main street in Vineyard Haven.
"We used all its functions," Mr. Steere said. "Café Moxie was gone when we got there. Our goal was to keep the fire from spreading into the bookstore" from the basement of the restaurant where it originated. "We couldn't just put water down on it from above. That may have pushed the fire into Bunch of Grapes' basement," he said.
At the end of that long day, Bunch of Grapes was standing. The business has since been sold and temporary quarters are being set up in space near Beadniks on Church Street in Vineyard Haven while the original bookstore is restored.
Learning curve extended
On Kennebec Avenue Sunday, Edgartown fire captain Geoff Freeman was writing in his notebook while his aerial truck circled its 75-foot ladder carefully in front of the Offshore Ale House. "We learned that the overhead wires on Kennebec require us to position here, past the Nashua Hotel, to cover this end of the street," he said.
"That means we can get here either by coming down Kennebec or by coming up the wrong way in case of fire," Edgartown assistant fire chief Scott Ellis said.
"We now also know that we can reach Linda Jean's and 50 feet on either side from here."
Reaching the fire
Reach and access are the keys to effective firefighting, said Joe deBettencourt, the latest in generations of deBettencourt Oak Bluffs fire volunteers, as his father, Captain Buddy deBettencourt, a veteran of 55 years on the department, listened.
Dropping down from the department's new aerial pumper on Circuit Avenue near Seasons restaurant, Joe deBettencourt was excited. "We can cover all these buildings and all the houses in the Campgrounds past the road. If the wind is right, we can generate a 100-foot stream with this equipment," he said. His father smiled, noting that the $800,000 machine is Oak Bluffs's first new pumper since 1958.
And so it went, more than a dozen firefighters spending a Sunday afternoon testing, probing, gathering information to fight fire more effectively. They are the vanguard of 233 volunteer Island firefighters who will soon have a blueprint for where to be and what to do in case of fire in downtown Oak Bluffs.
Pete Forend, Oak Bluffs fire chief, said the goal of the Sunday exercise was to "generate a layout, a schematic, on specific locations and to distribute it to all the departments. The water department is also testing hydrant water pressure for us. We'll color code them by pressure rating. That's a great help in case of fire," he said.
Tisbury Chief Schilling noted the importance of advance information. "For example, West Tisbury doesn't have hydrants, so knowing where ours are and what their capabilities are is important."
Based on the reaction from Sunday's exercise, it's likely that onsite preplanning will be expanded to other towns. Edgartown's chief, Peter Shemeth, and Chief Schilling evinced strong support to harness the benefits of technology, cooperation and preplanning for their towns, as it was experienced by Oak Bluffs on Sunday.
