Station for Paid, Volunteer Companies Makes Good Friends, Better Service
photos by Roger A. Zeeb
At 3 o’clock in the morning the sheriff’s communication center in Douglas County, Neb., receives a report of a house fire in the new Stoneybrook subdivision, a mile and a half outside the Omaha city limits.
The address is in the fire protection district of the Millard Rural Volunteer Fire Department. The dispatcher activates the radio alarm system to bring the Millard volunteers out of their beds and off to their station.
On the way to the station a Millard officer grabs the microphone for the two-way radio in his car and keys it. “Millard 702 to Omaha sheriff. Request mutual aid from Omaha Engine 54.” It is the officer’s thought that the fire could have a good headstart and the paid fire fighters at the Omaha station nearest to the address might be quicker in responding at this time of night.
Paid company dispatched
The request is relayed by the sheriffs dispatcher to the Omaha fire dispatcher and three tones go out! “Fire alarm. Fire alarm. Engine 54 mutual aid to Millard…”
Mutual aid calls are common enough throughout the nation, but this particular request for assistance has an unusual aspect to it. When Omaha Engine 54 responds, it will roll out of the same station that houses the apparatus of the Millard Volunteer Fire Department.
In what is a unique case of cooperation between two politically separate fire departments—one fully paid, one fully volunteer—the situation is southwest Omaha still causes a few heads to turn in amazement after eight years. In a single, half-block-long, modern brick building on the corner of a busy commercial intersection there exists side by side the station for Engine Company 54 of the Omaha Fire Division and the station for the Millard Volunteer Fire Department. While Station 54 is one of the quieter houses in Omaha, the Millard station, through rapid residential and commercial development of the district it serves outside the city limits, has become the busiest “rural” firehouse in Nebraska. In 1978, the department logged 781 calls.
Fire department survives
Ten years ago Millard was a small independent city of 3.5 square miles and nearly 10,000 residents. It abutted the southwest boundaries of Omaha with a population of 350,000. At that time, Millard had its own mayor and city council, its own police department, public works department, and fire department. Then in 1971, Omaha, chafing with the need to increase its tax and population bases, annexed the City of Millard after a long and bitter court battle by the smaller community to retain its autonomy. With the annexation, Millard’s police and public works departments ceased to exist. But the volunteer fire department was a different matter.
To provide its citizens with first-rate fire protection, the City of Millard had for a number of years contracted with the Millard Rural Fire Protection District (comprising approximately 50 square miles of suburban and rural territory in two counties) for use of the district’s fire apparatus within the city limits. In return, Millard agreed to house the district’s equipment and provide the manpower to operate for the district. A four-bay station attached to the city hall complex housed the two engines, tanker, utility truck, and grass fire truck belonging to the district. The volunteers of the Millard Fire Department, Incorporated, provided the manpower. The volunteers also owned and operated a two-ambulance rescue service for both the city and the district.
When Omaha annexed Millard, there were five years remaining on the contract with the rural fire district. This meant that Omaha, which assumed all debts and obligations of the annexed community, found itself suddenly obliged to honor the contract. The city had two alternatives. It could provide the district with an Omaha engine company of paid men (three shifts, 12 fire fighters) from a division that was already at minimum strength, or it could find a way to permit the volunteers to continue serving the district.
New agreement written
Chief Vernon Van Scoy of the Omaha Fire Division recalls, “In no way could the Omaha Fire Division have served the area being covered by the City of Millard in their agreement with the rural fire protection district at the time of annexation. We had to find a way to keep the Mijlard fire station where it was to effectively permit the volunteers to continue uninterrupted service.”
In a new agreement, this time between the City of Omaha and the rural district’s governing hoard, the city leased to the district for a dollar a year the fire station and the portion of the former Millard city hall which contained the fire fighters’ meeting room and kitchen. The agreement was made for 10 years with the option by the district to renew.
It might have ended there with the MVFD becoming the only independent volunteer department ever stationed inside the city limits, a unique circumstance in itself. But the mayoral election of 1972 added a new wrinkle. Running for office against the incumbent was Ed Zorinsky, now United States Senator from Nebraska. He campaigned heavily in the Millard area, where emotions were still strong over the loss of governmental autonomy to annexation. Zorinsky won handily. One of his campaign promises, and one of the first he fulfilled when he assumed office, was to move an Omaha engine company into the heart of the Millard community for quick first-alarm response. Of course, there was only one practical place to station the unit.
Bays added to station
The rural district and the city met again to work out an agreement supported by Van Scoy and by Chief Willis Rix of the Millard department. Three more hays and a new meeting room for the volunteers were added to the station, making the completed facility seven bays wide. An interior block wall was erected to separate the two hays closest to the former city hall from the five bays and meeting room assigned the volunteers. A large portion of the city hall was converted into living quarters. The Omaha chief assigned a new engine initially designated for service at another station, handpicked three captains and nine fire fighters he knew would get along well with volunteers, and Engine Company 54 was created.
One of the first fire fighters to be assigned to Station 54 was Fire Apparatus Engineer Robert Yasen. Before the annexation, Yasen was a Millard police officer and a volunteer fire fighter. With annexat ion, he joined the Omaha Fire Division as a paid fire fighter. Because of his intimate knowledge of 54’s territory and his background as a volunteer, Yasen was a natural selection for the new company.
“Before and right after annexation,” Yasen remembers, “there was a real competitive and independent attitude between the departments—between paid and volunteer throughout the mutual aid association. (Omaha and Millard belong to the Tri Mutual Aid Association, comprised of 21 departments in the metropolitan area.) There were cases of confusion and argument over boundaries where department territories joined, especially in those little pockets of the county that were left when Omaha annexed around an area. Now, it doesn’t matter. The two departments work together so frequently and the cooperation is so good that if Millard answers a call that turns out to l>e in the city or vice versa, there is never any question.”
Personnel screened
With only a concrete block wall separating the two, has there ever been any friction between the volunteers and the paid fire fighters?
“I don’t think there ever was a conflict,” Rix, now former chief of Millard, says. “1 never had any doubt that it would work. Of course, Van (Chief Van Scoy) had a lot to do with making it work. He screened the initial firemen going into 54’s. If a few of the more ardent union men had come out, it might not have gone as smoothly.”
Omaha Fire Fighter Anthony Enzolera of Engine 54, adds, “I think it’s the leadership in both departments that has made it work. If we had leaders who couldn’t get along, we might not get along either.”
Both sides agree that the concrete wall between them is an important factor in maintaining mutual integrity.
“At first they were going to put in a partial wall, half way up,” Rix recalls. “But we insisted it had to be a full wall to keep us separate, if we were going to keep out of each other’s hair.”
Friendly neighbors
Captain Ralph Leonard of Engine 54, explains, “We were put out here with a territory to make and we do our job. I run my operation and they (the volunteers) run theirs. We live in our own houses, but we’re very friendly neighbors.”
Are there any advantages for a paid department in having a volunteer department next door?
“The availability of their equipment and manpower close by is comforting,” Leonard says. “When our company is out, the dispatcher can call Millard to handle another emergency in the territory rather than draw an engine from farther away. If I need help on a call, I won’t hesitate to call on them. I know that when our Squad 53 is out, Millard is automatically dispatched as the closest squad in the West End.”
Enzolera sees another advantage. “If we’re out all night on a worker, we very often come back and find they have food waiting for us and help with cleanup.”
“That’s true,” Leonard replies. “And if we run short of a pot or pan over here, we can run next door and get one from them. I have yet to be refused when I need to borrow something from them. When you bring it down to that level, I don’t see how it can be any better.”
Advantages seen
Van Scoy looks at it with a wider view. Having two departments under a common roof “gives the paid fire fighter a chance to work closely with the volunteers and to get to know them personally. This makes the entire mutual aid system better. By living next to each other and working together, friction has been removed and replaced by mutual trust and respect. Both paid and volunteer fire fighters train together more often now and are familiar with each other’s equipment and procedures. In time of mutual aid either can operate the other’s equipment and know what to expect.”
The major advantage for the volunteers in having a paid company next door is the immediate response in emergencies where time is critical.
“When you need help fast, it’s almost like hollering across the drive to get it,” Dan Siemek, president of the MVFD, says.
There have been any number of instances when the two stations have worked together on fire calls. But there are two that stand out in the memories of those who have been around since the joint tenancy began.
The first was in January 1975, when a blizzard paralyzed the eastern part of the state for two days. For a period of 10 hours one night, the only Omaha unit in the western part of the city that was not stuck on the road or drifted in at the station was Engine 54. The volunteers stayed at their station all night, answering calls into the county, and each time Omaha had a run in the city, a Millard engine and tanker rolled with them, using the low-geared, high-centered tanker to bust drifts and supply water when hydrants could not be located beneath the snow.
Lumber yard fire
The second incident where the two teamed up for a prolonged period of time was at a four-alarm fire in June 1976 at a lumber yard just two blocks from the station. Engine 54 and two of Millard’s engines were the first responding units, and they effectively covered exposures and stopped the northward progress of the fire which, set by flammable liquids, raged through towering stacks of lumber and roofing material in the south yard of the fiveblock-long company grounds. As other Omaha units and mutual aid tankers arrived, the Millard engines supplied master streams for Aerial 53 and a deluge gun, as well as hand lines. Volunteer manpower worked side by side with, or in relief of, paid men on hand lines.
The fire burned contained for two more days until loaders could pull the stacks apart and remove debris. On the second night, a four-alarm hotel fire broke out downtown, and Millard moved back into the lumber yard to relieve two Omaha units doing overhaul, allowing Engine 54 and neighboring Engine 53 to complete their normal move-up.
Under the strong mutual aid agreement which exists between Omaha and surrounding community fire departments, such instances of joint operations may still have occurred. But there seems little doubt among many members of the Tri Mut ual Aid Association, both volunteer and paid, that the relationship which is enjoyed by the Millard volunteers and the men of Engine 54 has been a model for the common bond among fire fighters everywhere.
Captain Leonard of Omaha sums it up in this way: “If the whole of the United States cooperated like us and the volunteers, there wouldn’t be a bit of trouble in the country.
