VILLAGE OF MANLIUS — On Oct. 11, the Village of Manlius Board of Trustees discussed a proposal intended to address the challenges associated with the Manlius Fire Department responding to mutual aid incidents outside its fire protection district.
The Manlius Fire Department provides fire, emergency medical services (EMS), and rescue services to the Village of Manlius, the Town of Manlius, and the Town of Pompey. The fire department covers approximately 27 square miles of both residential, commercial, and agricultural properties.
Fire Chief Jansen Casscles introduced his proposal by reporting that from Jan. 1, 2022, to Sep. 30, 2022, Manlius Fire Department units were dispatched 80 times in the Town of Sullivan, 60 times in the City of Syracuse, and around 30 times in the Town of DeWitt — three areas served by the emergency medical services company American Medical Response, Inc. (AMR).
“We’ve actually had somebody in Chittenango that has received ambulance services four times over the course of two years,” said Casscles. “Of those four requests for ambulances, we’ve provided three of the responses.”
Casscles informed the board that there is interest in generating a collaborative plan involving the Villages of Manlius, Fayetteville, and Minoa as well as the Cazenovia Area Volunteer Ambulance Corps (CAVAC).
“[The plan is to] say, ‘Listen, we are going to draw a geographic map that includes the areas that those four agencies cover,’” said Casscles. “‘We’ll help each other within these areas. Anywhere outside of that, you’ll have to get essentially chief officer-level approval to send us.’ [Our] ambulances would be available to anybody basically on our borders. It kind of blocks off the areas of AMR, but if there was some hellacious car crash or a thruway accident [in AMR’s coverage area], of course, we would go help them. If somebody serves bad food at a wedding again and there are 37 people that need ambulances, of course, we are going to go help them do that.”
Trustee Tom Pilewski stated that the department’s primary duty is to protect the areas that the village contracts with.
“If 911 says, ‘Hey, we need somebody,’ we can’t leave our citizens unprotected — our district unprotected — to go help another agency unless it’s an all hands on deck sort of thing,” Pilewski said. “Even then, if somebody calls here and we are somewhere else, that’s a problem.”
Casscles noted that from a regulatory side of things, the department is well within its rights to say it needs to stick to its own coverage area.
“The department of health has been on record [saying repeatedly], ‘You are under no obligation to dump all your resources elsewhere because they are not providing services,” he said. “. . . The mutual aid agreement is eons old, and all it says is that they will dispatch the next closest appropriate ambulance. There is nothing in the mutual aid plan that actually talks about the responsibility to then respond. They’ll dispatch it, and if that agency doesn’t get out, they’ll dispatch the next one, and so on and so forth.”
According to the chief, the policy he is proposing has already been adopted in other parts of Onondaga County, including within the City of Syracuse.
To emphasize the need for such a policy, Casscles recounted an incident that occurred on the evening of Saturday, Oct. 8.
He recalled that the Manlius Fire Department’s EMS resources were “all dried up” — with one unit dispatched to the Hamlet of Nedrow — when a car accident occurred in Pompey. The victim suffered a “profound head laceration with arterial bleeding” and the department’s ambulances were unavailable to respond to the situation.
“It was in our territory in Pompey, but CAVAC had one ambulance left and they came over and provided it,” he said. “The cascade effect continues. Minoa covered a CAVAC call in New Woodstock for difficulty breathing. That’s a long [way]. At the end of the day, what was occurring? What started all of this? [It] was our resources going all the way to Nedrow for a zero-priority call.”
Mayor Paul Whorrall remarked that the village has no problem sending responders to the Town of Pompey, because the municipality contracts with the village, but he is less comfortable sending ambulances to areas that have decided not to contract with the village but still call the department on mutual aid.
“I can’t see us sending our ambulance out of our territory and having our taxpayers foot the bill for a call in Tully, or Lafeyette, or [somewhere else],” said Whorrall. “That’s just not fair to our taxpayers. So, something has to happen, and it has to happen fairly quickly before something really bad happens. . . Every time two ambulances are gone, we can’t provide fire service. We will be able when we have three people manning an engine, but still, a fully-involved housefire can’t be fought with three people.”
Trustee Hank Chapman commented that the village wants to respect mutual aid and help when it’s needed, but he recognizes that the taxpayers pay a lot of money for emergency services, and if they are not able to get what they are expecting and paying for, the village is not doing its job.
Ultimately, the board offered its support for the proposed policy.
Casscles said that with the village’s support, the fire department plans to communicate with the neighboring agencies, generate documents to bring its crews and 911 centers up to speed, and communicate with agencies and elected officials in areas like the Town of Sullivan and the Town of DeWitt so they understand where the village is coming from.
On Oct. 12, Casscles said his department had already spoken with leadership from Fayetteville and it intends to reach out to Minoa and CAVAC for collaboration as well.
“It’s probably a 30 to 45-day inaction time,” Casscles concluded. “This wouldn’t happen tomorrow.”
In other news
During the mayor’s report, Whorrall remarked on a banquet held on Oct. 8 in honor of his 50 years of active service to the Manlius Fire Department.
The event, which was held at the Hampton Inn & Suites Cazenovia, was attended by more than 80 people, including Whorrall’s friends and family, village trustees, and members of the fire department.
Whorrall was presented with commemorative gifts and honors from multiple organizations and individuals, including the village board, the fire chief, the volunteer fire company, the county executive, the Manlius town supervisor, the mayors of Fayetteville and Minoa, the Fayetteville Fire Department, the New York State Conference of Mayors, the Firefighters Association of the State of New York, and the Onondaga County Volunteer Firefighter’s Association.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to be a member of the organization,” said Whorrall, who is a past fire chief and current volunteer member. “It was an honor to have that type of recognition and to have all those people there. I said it the other night and I’ll say it again, the fire department is a second family for me. I’ve [made] friends that are friends forever now.”
Whorrall also highlighted the importance of the relationships formed within the organization.
“If you go into a fire, you’ve got to have trust in the guy that you go in with,” he said. “The fire service is an organization that lives on trust. . . There isn’t a better organization that has the kind of camaraderie and commitment and passion that the fire service has.”
During his report, the mayor also suggested that the village board meetings be moved to an earlier time to allow people to get out at a more reasonable time. Going forward, the regular village board meetings will begin at 6:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of every month in the Manlius Village Centre Board Room, 1 Arkie Albanese Ave., Manlius.
