Waterloo Vol Fire Co.

About the Waterloo Volunteer Fire Company, Inc.

 

The village of Waterloo, New York is located approximately half way between Rochester and Syracuse in the Finger Lakes Region of New York along the Cayuga-Seneca Canal that splits the village with about two-thirds on the north side of the canal and one-third south of the canal. Our village was incorporated in 1815 and named after Waterloo, Belgium, the site of the famous battle during the Napoleonic War. Waterloo currently has a population of around 5000 people. If you include the portions of the three surrounding towns that we protect, the population increases to around 7500 the number of people we protect.

 

The Waterloo Volunteer Fire Department was incorporated by an act of the New York State Legislature in 1830, making us one of the oldest incorporated volunteer fire departments in the State of New York. During our long history, there has been as many as 7 separate engine companies in multiple small stations, along with one hook & ladder company in our village. In 1921 the separate companies were re-organized in to a membership non-for-profit corporation called the Waterloo Volunteer Fire Company, Inc. working out of two stations on either side of our down town area. Since 1991, we consolidated in to our current station that houses all of our equipment. It is located on a side street that intersects the main east-west road in our area, NY State Route 5/ US Route 20, at one end of the street and the main north-south road, NY Route 96, at the other end of the street.

 

We are bordered by, along with receiving and giving mutual aid to, the Junius and Magee Fire Departments to our north, the Seneca Falls Fire Department to our east, the Fayette Fire Department to the south-east, the Varick Fire Department to our south-west and the Border City Fire Department to our west. We are very appreciative of their and the other farther out departments that provide us help when we need it and we are more than willing to come and assist you at any time. 

 

Our organization is set up that the Village of Waterloo Board of Trustees is our Authority Having Jurisdiction over us, which means we are a municipal department that is part of the village government. The members and officers of our company are elected by the membership, but the Village Board has the final approval on new members and line officers. 

We have two categories of officers, line officers and corporation officers. The line officers are the Chief, two Assistant Chiefs, a Captain, 4 Lieutenants, a Fire Police Captain, a Fire Police Lieutenant and the Safety Officers. The corporate officers are the President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, Assistant Treasurer, Custodian, Chaplin, Assistant Chaplin, and a six member Board of Directors that are responsible for controlling company property. All the officers are elected at our April annual meeting except for the Chief, who serves for a two year term, and the Board of Directors that serve for a staggered 3 year term so that we only vote for two Board members per year. The Fire Police Captain and Lieutenant along with the Safety Officers are appointed positions that serve at the discretion of the Chiefs.

 

Our primary source of funds come from the village through the property taxes in our village and the monies paid to the village by the three surrounding towns in contracts to the village to provide fire protection to parts of the Towns of Waterloo, Seneca Falls, and Fayette.  Our secondary source of funds is through multiple year-round fund raising activities. We have been lucky to have been the recipients of two Federal Assistance to Fire Fighting Grants, so far. This has allowed us to buy some much needed, but expensive, equipment to help us serve our community better and with increased safety to our fire fighters

 

We used to run around 280 per year, but we have set new records for 2005, 2006 & 2007. For 2007 we responded 336 times to calls. This includes times when we’ve had multiple weather related problems such as wires down or flooding that get recorded as one call with lots of addresses. We do not respond as EMS first responders. North Seneca Ambulance, a non-for-profit company with volunteer members, has their headquarters in our village and could usually be on the scene of a medical call before we could. As a matter of Seneca County policy, we do respond to all personal injury motor vehicle accidents with in our jurisdiction and are available with our heavy rescue for mutual aid.

 

All of our fire fighters, including the fire police, are trained to either the New York State Fire Fighter Level 1 or Scene Support Level along with Hazardous Materials Operations as a minimal amount of training. Most of us have also gone on and taken specialized training in many areas, too. These have included: Hazardous Materials Technician; Vehicle Extrication Technician; Fire Police; Incident Command; Safety Officer; Motorsports Emergency Response; and Fire Fighter Assist and Search Team. Since we are only about an hour drive from the New York State Fire Academy in Montour Falls, lots of our members have gone there for advanced training in many of the area mentioned.

 

Our apparatus currently consists of two Class A engines, one heavy rescue, one tanker, one brush truck, and one squad van. We also house the Seneca County Hazardous Materials Team’s main response trailer. We have several of our members on this team. The Haz Mat Team’s other trailers are quartered at the Romulus Fire Department, near the geographic center of Seneca County.

For the sake of consistency and ease of operations, both of our engines are basically set up the same with only some minor differences. They both are a 5-person cab with a single stage 1250 GPM pump with a 1000 gallon booster tank, a pre-piped deck gun, 1000 feet of 4” supply line, and several pre-connected hand lines. The minor differences being that one has a 30 gallon foam tank piped to the cross laid lines and the other has some of the smaller equipment for water supply.

Our rescue has an 8-person cab and is equipped with an on-board PTO hydraulic generator. It also carries the expected equipment for support at a fire and all of our vehicle extrication tools, including hydraulic spreaders, cutters and rams; air bags; and lots of hand tools. We also have a 4 cylinder cascade system and two SCBA tank fill station on our rescue. Our rescue is the truck we use when responding mutual aid with our FAST/RIT team. Waterloo is one of the few departments in Seneca County that has a FAST team. Our normal FAST Team response is one driver, 4 – 6 FAST trained fire fighters/officers, one chief, and one safety officer (if available). We also carry enough equipment to handle a moderate sized fuel spill on either land or water, with more equipment stored at our station, not including the Haz Mat Team’s equipment.

The tanker has a 2000 gallon flat sided plastic tank with three 10” square quick dumps, one on each side and one on the back. We also carry a 2000 gallon Port-a-Tank on this truck. The tanker does have a 250 GPM PTO pump, used mainly to off load at a distance, such as at a brush fire, or when using the Port-a-Tank in impractical. We prefer to use the 4” Stortz fill pipe getting water from either a hydrant or an engine.

Our brush truck is our newest truck. It is on a heavy-duty extended cab pick up truck chassis with a skid unit in the rear. The unit has a 200 gallon main tank and an 8 gallon foam tank. We have both 1” hard booster hose on a reel and 1” forestry hose in the side compartments for fighting grass fires. This truck also carries four 5 gallon hard plastic back pack tanks for use away from the truck.

The squad van is a basic 11-person van. We usually have the rear most bench seat out to increase the cargo space, but can put it back should we have need to transport a lot of people. Our van is one of the two trucks owned by the members and not the village, the other being the brush truck, so that our Ladies Auxiliary can use the van to provide us the very welcome and appreciated support at any incident.