Peggy Revell
2009 marks the 30th anniversary of Alberton’s volunteer fire department.
“There was a house just north of me here that caught on fire and there were two fatalities, a little girl and her grandfather who had passed,” explained current fire chief Sandy Haney on why there was the big push for the formation of the volunteer fire department.
“[It] must have been in January of ’79.”
With a bylaw passed on Feb. 14, 1979, about 70 men (including Haney) assembled to volunteer their services. Jim McKinnon was appointed as the first chief and Dean Whalen as deputy chief.
There also were around seven captains who each had five or six guys with them.
In the beginning, each of the captains had what was called “fire phones” in their house, Haney said.
“They rang at a real short and very fast ring,” he recalled. “It was a ‘ringringringring’ and if you had a fire, you’d call that number and it rang in about likely eight places. Then the guy, the man would go and his wife would call the rest of his team to the fire.
“So that’s how we got the first communication set up.”
The department’s first truck was a 1953 GMC purchased from Harlan Faragher, Haney said.
“A couple of guys had to borrow the money out of their own bank account to pay for it because he wanted to sell it right now and [Alberton] council, they weren’t too sure about it, so the guys borrowed the money and paid for it and then the council reimbursed them,” he noted.
From there they moved on to a ’79 Ford. The department now has a 2004 Mercedes-Benz Freightliner.
“And we’ve got a lot more equipment—we’ve got the basic ‘jaws of life,’ we’ve got a tank truck, it’s 1990 Mac with a 2,400-gallon tank on it, and we’ve got the ported tanks to set up to dump into and pumps and all this stuff that goes along with it,” Haney said.
For years the firefighters would raise money to buy equipment through auction sales, dances, and other fundraisers, he recalled.
“The first couple houses and fires we went to, back then there wasn’t much for training and we just kind of fumbled our way through it,” he recalled.
“It was pretty scary when you first start, and you go to your first house fire and there’s smoke coming out every place,” he admitted. “I know that one time we parked the truck right beside the house and then we said we’d better back the truck up a little ways because if we don’t save the house, the truck’s going to burn, too.
“And we had quite a few fires back then—way more than what we have now,” he added.
“We haven’t had a fire call, or anything major like a house, for quite a while,” Haney said. “Back then, we were out two or three times a week for chimney fires. There were lots of people burning firewood, and getting back into firewood at that point.”
On some occasions, firefighters could be called out two or three times in the night for these chimney fires.
Since forming, Haney said the Alberton volunteer fire department also has been lucky because it’s never had to go to a scene where people have been trapped in a home.
One of Haney’s biggest memories is the night in the early 1980s when Captain Robby’s, a big supper club at the edge of the township, caught fire.
“I can’t remember what year that was, but it was New Year’s Eve, I know that,” recalled Haney. “It caught on fire and burned down, and we spent the whole night out there on New Year’s Eve fighting a fire there.”
While they no longer see as many house fires, Haney said one change since first starting out is that the department is now being called out to accidents on the highway, noting this part is one he doesn’t particularly like.
“You know there’s somebody hurt when you’re called out to them,” he explained.
Another key development in the past 30 years was establishing the mutual aid system.
“That’s a great system,” Haney stressed. “We help each other. Devlin, if they have a big fire, they call us automatically just about and the same thing with us. They’ve got a big tank truck there, and we’ve got our truck and we can supply a lot of water.
“If we work together, it’s quite good.
“I think it’s just a good organization, it does a lot of benefit for the municipality,” Haney remarked.
With a recent reorganization, Haney said the Alberton volunteer fire department has about 17 guys right now who are a gung-ho to learn.
“I still feel that it’s really good for the municipality and the district,” he noted. “If the whole district didn’t have fire departments up and down the line that help each other, it would be a major disaster.”
