A Day With The Washington Township Fire Department

By: Mark Moffa, Staff Writer, http://www.messengerpress.com 

WASHINGTON - It's 5 a.m. Friday. My alarm clock is beeping. I haven't been up at this hour since finals week at college. It's my day to ride along with the Washington Township Fire Department.
   I arrive at 6:45 a.m. The shifts are about to change. A new crew of three firefighters will arrive to spend the next 24 hours of their lives in the fire station - or out fighting fires, whatever the shift may bring.
   I meet Jason Palmer. His shift is in its 23rd hour, but he is kind enough to give me a tour of the station. The building recently has been refurbished. There is a new control room, lounge, kitchen, bunk room, and weight room.
   "You have to stay physically fit, because you never know when you're going to have to pull someone out of a burning building," he says as we exit the weight room.
   I get to see the "new" truck. It's only about 4 years old. I later learn trucks are replaced about every 20 years.
   It's now after 7 a.m., and Mr. Palmer is leaving. The new crew has arrived: Bernard Crammer, Chuck Savoca and Lt. Dennis Symons.
   Lt. Dennis Williams, who just finished his shift, fills in Lt. Symons on what to expect during the shift.
   He says the fire commissioners will be stopping by to fill out a $25,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency grant application.
   "We don't have a shot in hell," Lt. Williams says. Only 10 fire companies nationally will receive the award.
   It's now 7:30. Mr. Savoca is performing the morning apparatus check - making sure everything on all the trucks is in working order.
   Lt. Symons is checking his mail and beginning to settle down at the desk in the duty office.
   "I'm the computer guy," he says.
   He shows me samples of the different forms involved in the record-keeping process.
   The department keeps a laptop computer containing contact information and schematics for each business in township on its truck. Lt. Symons is updating the information.
   He explains that a daily journal is required of each officer. Each shift consists of an officer and two other firefighters. The department became a 24-hour paid department earlier this year.
   There was much talk throughout the day about the difference in response time between a paid department and a volunteer department. The station, of course, still depends on volunteers to help out when needed, but officials say they are hurting for members.
   "Everybody has a membership problem," Lt. Symons explains.
   He recalls a recent trash bin fire in the middle of the night. When the firefighters arrived - in three minutes - they realized the trash bin was up against a building full of tires.
   If the crew had taken 12 minutes (the usual volunteer response time) to arrive, "that fire would have been in the building for sure," Lt. Symons says.
   Lt. Symons has an associate's degree in fire science and business from Mercer County College. Now 32, he has lived in Washington all his life and joined the company at the age of 20.
   Fire commissioners Nate Bouchelle and Syd Emmons arrive at 8:35. Mr. Emmons drops off plans for warehouses proposed to be built off West Manor Way by the New Jersey Turnpike.
   Lt. Symons thinks of an errand he needs to do for the company today. Mr. Savoca has finished the equipment check and Mr. Crammer is finishing mopping the floors. Lt. Symons throws on his radio and pager and we're off to the truck.
   We all leave the house in the fire truck at 9:05. Lt. Symons explains that the group must travel together and must use the truck in the event of an alarm.
   I sit in the truck, in an enclosed cab area behind the front seat. It's where the firefighters suit up on the way to a call.
   Mr. Savoca drives. Lt. Symons sits up front with him. I chat with Mr. Crammer as Lt. Symons drops off Vial of Life program forms to be copied at a print shop in the Foxmoor Shopping Center.
   "I dedicated all my time and schooling for the fire service," Mr. Crammer says. At 21, he has completed EMT and firefighter courses at Burlington, Camden, and Mercer County fire academies.
   "It's been tough, but it's worth it and I love it," Mr. Crammer says. "What I love about it is it's different; it's different every day."
   We have some time to kill while the print shop makes the copies. We drive around the township, which occupies 25 square miles. Mr. Crammer and I talk for a while about how much the fire service has changed in the past few decades.
   "EMS was like a dirty word," Mr. Crammer says. Firefighters used to just fight fires, he explains. Now, most are trained in emergency medical services - which comes in handy in cases when the fire truck arrives more quickly than the ambulance.
   "Thirty years ago nobody wore air packs going into a house fire," Mr. Crammer says. "I don't think a fireman could make it nowadays without an air pack."
   We also talk about his girlfriend.
   "She worries," he says. "She worries a lot about me. I can't blame her. I imagine, if she was a police officer, I'd be worried too."
   Meanwhile, Lt. Symons is speaking to Mr. Savoca.
   "Those other warehouses, by what those plans are showing, would be on the other side of this parking lot, I think," Lt. Symons says, as we drive around the warehouse construction site off West Manor Way. The firefighters are discussing how they would handle a fire in the facility and wondering whether certain access roads will be wide enough.
   "What kind of hydrant system is this going to be on?" Mr. Crammer asks.
   Eventually, we return to Foxmoor. Mr. Savoca notices a little boy in the arms of his father. The boy's eyes light up as Mr. Savoca turns the truck's lights on. Mr. Crammer jumps down to give the boy a little firefighter's hat.
   The boy, Bill Maresca Jr., is shy about wearing the hat - but he really likes the lights.
   "This Fire Department, they go the extra mile for public relations," Mr. Crammer says as we pull away from the shopping center. "You don't see a lot of fire departments going the extra mile for people like that."
   At 10:15, we're back at the firehouse. Lt. Williams is back as well, three hours after completing his 24-hour shift.
   He says it's kind of an anomaly for him to come back like this, but he wanted to present the senior citizens at the nutrition center with the new Vial of Life forms and he volunteered to help fill out the FEMA grant application.
   Lt. Williams doesn't seem too comfortable telling me how he became a firefighter. He says it was culmination of a few events, and mentions a fire he witnessed when he was 21 years old, where he pulled two people out of a burning building.
   He also remembers seeing someone have a heart attack in Mercer County Park. He was prompted by these events to renew his CPR license, he says. The rest just happened.
   I find myself standing with Mr. Savoca. He tells me he moved to New Jersey from Florida in 1995 and has lived in Washington Township since 1997.
   He recalls working at a Kid's Fun Station in Orlando, then losing his job and moving to New Jersey to be with his girlfriend.
   Mr. Savoca was an assistant manager at a First Fidelity Bank before it was bought out by First Union. At that point, he began to teach preschool at the Harmony School on Washington Boulevard and started volunteering with the Washington Township Fire Department.
   "It was something I always wanted to do but never had the time for," Mr. Savoca says.
   After marrying in 1997, he moved to Washington from Plainsboro. Like Mr. Crammer's girlfriend, Mr. Savoca's wife worries.
   "She likes the fact that I drive because that means that I don't have to go in the building all the time," he says. "She really likes the schedule where I get to stay home for three days."
   Although the firefighters work a 24-hour shift, they do get 72 hours off before their next shift.
   Mr. Savoca is one of the six firefighters hired earlier this year when the department doubled its paid crew in order to provide 24-hour paid fire service. His probationary period will end in two days.
   He talks about the course he and the 47 others who tested for the jobs had to endure, and about the first fire he ever witnessed: A Pizza Hut burned to the ground.
   "I think I did say that I wanted to be a fireman, way back then," he recalls.
   Mr. Savoca also remembers his misconceptions of the fire service.
   "The Fire Department is not as I pictured it," Mr. Savoca says.
   He thought firefighting was strictly blue-collar grunt work that guys without much education were forced to do for a living.
   "The ability to operate the truck is just an education in and of itself," he says. He is fascinated by all the areas in which firefighters can specialize - planes, trains, automobiles, confined spaces, water, trenches, etc.
   It seems like he would continue talking, but it's 11:25, time to head over to the Senior Center.
   We return to the station at 1:20 p.m. and have lunch with Lt. Williams and fire commissioner Debbie Matson.
   After the meal, Lt. Williams, Lt. Symons, Ms. Matson and Mr. Savoca sit down to organize that grant application. The afternoon activity consisted mainly of working on the application.
   "This is like trying to hit the hole-in-one on Augusta's 18th green, but hopefully it'll give us some focus," Lt. Williams says. Everyone is assigned something to do over the weekend for the application - it needs to be mailed Monday.
   I leave at 3:20. We haven't had a fire call. Although it would have been nice for this article to see the guys go to a fire, it's hard to be disappointed about not having a fire.
   "Some days you might not get a call and some days you might get six," Lt. Symons says.
   But perhaps it was good not to have a fire call. I was able to observe many of the different things the Washington Township Fire Department does when it's not fighting fires.
   Suffice to say, I went to bed early that night. This Friday, I'll set my alarm for 4 a.m. to spend the day with the Washington Township Police Department. Shifts there start at 6 a.m.