CONNEAUT – Firefighters can only use their equipment so long before the State of Ohio deems it no longer useful.
Some of the equipment and gear the Conneaut Fire Department uses was recently replaced as it had reached the end of that useful life. Instead of disposing of that equipment and gear, the department is donating it to be used in the training of the next generation of firefighters.
The North Kingsville Fire Department’s Cadet Program will benefit from the donation.
“We had our old air packs that we didn’t need anymore,” Conneaut Fire Chief Will Anderson said. “We can’t use them for firefighting. They’re past their useful life. They’re considered obsolete by industry standards. North Kingsville started a cadet program, and like any community in Ashtabula County, funds are always limited. I just thought it was a goodwill gesture for us to, rather than just throw these out, donate them to (North Kingsville) for training purposes.”
None of the gear or equipment can be used in fighting fires, but they can be useful.
“(The cadets) can use them to see what it’s like, and wear them while they’re carrying ladders, or pulling hose, or climbing ladders, or crawling through a maze of some sort,” Anderson said. “It gives them an idea what the job entails.”
The Conneaut Fire Department donated more than just the air packs, which cost between $9,000 and $10,000 each to replace.
“In addition to the air packs, we had some old sets of turnout gear and helmets that we can’t wear anymore because of age limitations, so we donated those, as well,” Anderson said. “They’ll be put to good use with the cadets until they’re old enough to be on a department where that department can then provide the personal protective equipment for those individuals.”
By donating the equipment and gear, Anderson is hopeful that some of those cadets are from his city and want to work for his department in the future.
“My hope is that some of those cadet firefighters that North Kingsville is kind of growing, maybe they’re from Conneaut and they want to come work in Conneaut. We’d love to have them, love to talk to them. If we can recruit homegrown talent, that’s going to be a good thing,” he said.
Anderson believes it’s important for fire departments to foster interest in the youth of their communities.
“They’re the future, but right now, we have a recruitment and, I’ll say, a hiring crisis, not just in Ohio or Ashtabula County, but in the country, as well,” Anderson said. “These jobs aren’t as glamorous as they used to be, for whatever reason. It doesn’t help that the international agency on the research of cancer has classified firefighting as a carcinogenic occupation. That doesn’t help. It doesn’t mean that every person who’s a firefighter is going to contract cancer, but with the makeup of houses nowadays, everything’s synthetic and petroleum based, and smoke, the byproducts of combustion, are just poison.”
There are steps local government and fire departments need to take to entice young people to enter police, fire and EMS departments.
“We need to make the job appealing,” Anderson said. “A lot of kids know that they can go to a trade school, become a welder or electrician, and make six figures a year. It’s not like that in the police, fire and EMS professions yet. That works against us. Then, you have kids that feel they need to go off to school. My son and daughter are two examples of that. One’s a sophomore in college and the other one graduated college. They knew they didn’t want to do this job and that’s okay.”
“We still need people to do this job, but the challenge comes in recruiting the people, but not lowering the hiring standards because we are faced with very, very sensitive and challenging situations where we’re going to help someone who might be having the worst day of their life,” Anderson continued. “We need to have good moral character, possess a moral compass, and just be good people who are compassionate, who know empathy, and we can’t have someone just to fill a slot that has a questionable background that isn’t necessarily looking out for the patient’s best interest. It’s a challenge to not lower your hiring standards, but keep bringing people in. No one has a magic answer for it, unfortunately.”
The Conneaut Fire Department’s donation is a show of support for another local department, which can go a long way as all fire departments must work together.
“We rely on all of our neighbors,” Anderson said. “We rely on North Kingsville Fire Department, Kingsville, Monroe, Pierpont, Springfield, Pa. We can’t do it ourselves. We need help. We had North Kingsville come in when we had three EMS calls in five minutes. We were just overwhelmed, so we needed their help. We help them and they help us, and it’s like that with all the departments in Ashtabula County.”
On the heels of purchasing new air packs through a FEMA grant, the Conneaut Fire Department completed three phases of training with its new equipment.
“We know that we’re here to take care of the residents of Conneaut. We know that we have a limited budget with decent equipment, but now it’s up to us, with the equipment, to make sure we’re well-trained, we’re proficient, and we can solve the problem that the person we’re helping is having,” Anderson said.
