Posts Tagged: Smithtown Fire Department
Benjamin Franklin Fire Service Trivia
A few days ago I was the guest speaker at the local Rotary. I was giving the Rotarians a general overview of my department and how we provide service to the community. In preparing an outline for my remarks I recalled that a member in the club always throws out a historic trivia challenge during the meetings. His facts are great and always met with amazement and a rumbling across the room of “I didn’t know that!”
Not to be one upped I needed a great wow factor fact about the fire service to win over the hearts and minds.
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Watching My Own Back
This past Friday we had a fully involved barn fire in Smithtown, NY where I serve as PIO. Fortunately horses stalled in the barn and other livestock where turned out in paddocks when the fire erupted so fortunately no animals were lost or injured.
In Smithtown, most property zoned for livestock has the family residence at the front of the property and the barn area set to the back.
At Friday’s fire the barn was about 100 yards set back from the access street. Incident command was also set up close to the barn. On the access street was one Engine supplying the water source from a hydrant, Fire Police and Suffolk County PD.
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Hello, who is this?
My department, the Smithtown Fire Department has part of our district run next to the picturesque Nissequogue River. The river is a haven for naturalists, canoe enthusiasts and kayakers. Each year we get a call or two to the river for rescues, mostly folks who have found themselves in the middle of the river during low tide and cannot get their boat out of the cement like mud.
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First Time in the Paper
Last night I attended a scholarship program for our two high schools. Each year the Smithtown Fire Department presents four scholarships to seniors who will pursue engineering degrees in college. The scholarships are in memory of two of our past members who died in the line of duty. Both were engineers by profession.
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Make your Department’s Message less Cumbersome
Talking about all the virtues of your department in one sitting can create a muddled message. Sometimes it is better to just focus in on one issue at a time.
My department. the Smithtown Fire Department, answers over 3,000 calls a year, maintains 12 pieces of fire apparatus, has over 160 members etc, etc, etc. While these numbers may be somewhat impressive, they can evoke yawns from the media and community residents.
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A Public Information Office relic of the past – the Telephone
I did my usual incident follow-up of press releases, photo dissemination, website, Twitter and Facebook postings without interacting with a single human voice. Not that I didn’t want to, that’s just the way it worked out.
Currently with the popularity of e-mails, Twitter, Facebook and text messages, it seems we rarely speak on the telephone anymore.
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Is the Media taking a Free Ride?
I understand that news organizations have their resources stretched by budget constraints, and we as PIO’s want to assist them to get the news out, but over the last year or so I am beginning to feel like we are serving as their adjunct news team.
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A Tragic, Senseless Death through an Open Manhole
One of the rudimentary things we first learn in the volunteer fire service is to start your size up the moment your pager tones you out. Draw a mental image of where the call is, what type of building and its construction, what equipment will be needed etc. Another early lesson is to do size up virtually all the time, when you are driving through your neighborhood, when you enter a business, when you visit you kid’s school. This could prepare you for future alarms to these areas.
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