By Ken D’Angelo
Minoa fire department life member
If you live in the village of Minoa or the parts of the Town of Manlius that are adjacent to it, you most likely have seen and definitely have heard sirens emanating from green emergency vehicles that are responding to calls for help from your friends, neighbors and maybe even you. If you call for assistance for a fire, auto accident, or rescue, the men and women of the Minoa Volunteer Fire Department will respond.
Please note the word “volunteer.” Your neighbors who are in those noisy, big green trucks share a tradition of dangerous, difficult, demanding and sometimes heartbreaking community service that goes back more than 100 years. In return for this service, they receive admiration, gratitude and personal satisfaction. But they do not receive a salary, hourly wage, gratuity or any other income that would appear on a W-2 form.
In the month of April, they gave a total of 186 hours of their time and energy in training for and responding to emergencies in your area.
Training drills are held every first, third and occasionally fifth Monday of each month. In April, they donated 96 hours total hours in honing their skills and acquiring new ones.
They responded to 34 calls for help from their community. The time spent in response was 90 hours; this represents the time from when a piece of equipment left the station up to the time it returned. It does not account for the time spent getting all equipment and vehicles ready for the next emergency response. A fair estimate of this housekeeping is about 15 minutes per firefighter per call.
Along with the time given to training and response, about 200 hours were spent in community service.
Because this department is volunteer, the members also are responsible for its administration, recruiting and financing. Every second and fourth Monday members have a business meeting where these items are discussed and resolved. Some items are the responsibilities of committees of two or more members. The time spent on these tasks is difficult to calculate but is essential work. Sometimes the task is a complicated one. For example, the annual Minoa Volunteer Fire Department Field Days not only has a committee but several sub-committees. By the way, this year the Field Days are June 2,3 and 4.
If things work out as hoped, this will be a regular item appearing in this newspaper. The goal is to give a regular report on training and response time given and to make the people who are served by this department more familiar with its members and their experiences. Until then, stay safe.
