By Mike Pettinella
For Video News Service
Although a meeting planned for tonight has been postponed, the proactive approach of the Pembroke Fire District chief to address volunteer fire and emergency response issues on Genesee County’s western end is still on the table.
Although a meeting planned for tonight has been postponed, the proactive approach of the Pembroke Fire District chief to address volunteer fire and emergency response issues on Genesee County’s western end is still on the table.
Pembroke Chief Jamie Waff today said a conflict with a fire training session at another location in the county forced him to call off a meeting with Corfu and East Pembroke fire representatives to discuss the possibility of consolidating services.
He said the meeting has been rescheduled for the fall.
“We’ve reached out to the Corfu Fire District and the East Pembroke Fire District, just to basically have a meeting with the three fire districts that are involved in the Town of Pembroke to talk pros and cons of merging all three districts or just merging two of them,” Waff said.
Fire and emergency response areas will come into play when discussing the possibility of a merger.
“As it stands, the Pembroke and Corfu fire districts are entirely in the Town of Pembroke, while the East Pembroke Fire District encompasses some of the Town of Pembroke and some of the Town of Batavia,” he said. “It crosses town lines.”
The chief said he thinks the time has come to “maybe bring in Darien and Alabama, too, and see what we can do on the whole west end of the county.”
“All of us, in one way or another, are facing the lack of firefighters – the lack of new people joining,” he offered. “Honestly, the Pembroke Fire District and the Corfu Fire District are doing well for manpower right now, but as those districts start to age out … I, myself, have over 20 years in a chief’s position in one way, shape or form.”
Waff said his department is “just trying to be proactive and doing what’s best for manpower and for the community at large because you don’t want to double up equipment.”
“For anything major, we’re calling in a mutual aid department. So, if we’re already handling these major incidents with other companies coming in to assist, let’s discuss a merge.”
He then spelled out a proposal that would merge the Pembroke Fire District (which also includes Indian Falls) with Corfu and East Pembroke, drawing new district boundaries and splitting the EMS calls into thirds.
“East Pembroke covers this part for EMS calls or the people out of Pembroke station covers this part,” he said. “If you’re one, and you have two medics in the Pembroke district and two medics in the Corfu district and three medics in East Pembroke’s district, and Pembroke has an EMS call in their territory, you can then draw out of all of those seven medics instead of just two of them.”
He said a merge could result in rotating weekend schedules among the three districts, alleviating the need for volunteers from a particular district to be on call every weekend.
In a related development, Waff said the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control has approved Pembroke’s request to have fire and emergency calls dispatched to the Pembroke Fire District when it involves areas covered by the Pembroke and Indian Falls fire departments.
No longer will calls be dispatched to Indian Falls, Waff said, although the operation of that department will remain the same.
He said the Indian Falls Fire Company was founded around 1956 and always has been governed by the Pembroke Fire District.
“It’s always been the Pembroke Fire District — just two separate fire companies. But effective today, and it has been a two-year long process with the state, we finally got everything squared away at the county level. We are now known as the Pembroke Fire District,” he said.
“Out in scanner land, you won’t hear Pembroke and Indian Falls getting dispatched anymore. It’s just going to be Pembroke getting dispatched as the Pembroke Fire District. The responses won’t change. It’ll still be stuff responding out of Pembroke and stuff responding out of Indian Falls.”