A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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We have had to deal with a lot of old or used trucks in the history of the HAVFD. One of them was a 100 foot ladder truck. This ladder truck had just that, a ladder, that you had to climb! This ladder truck came from the round of military base closings back in the nineties following the first Gulf war. The military downsized and the assets were made available to qualified organizations, that included us as a fire department on a federal Indian reservation. An intrepid crew went downstate to get the ladder truck, a 1964 American Lafrance. This...
The Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department has a unique makeup with a station in New York, a station in Ontario and a station in Quebec. This causes some confusion at times with both countries having different measuring systems. The US uses the English system (ironically, the English don’t) and Canada uses the metric system. If you’re exposed to both systems you can generally handle a few metric and English conversions easily. For instance, to get the Fahrenheit equivalent of Celsius just double the Celsius figure and add 30 and you’ll...
The third annual HAVFD raffle was held on Father’s Day, June 15, 2008. The prizes for this years raffle were: A 2008 Custom Yamaha Rhino provided by Roberts Sports Center INC., a 42” Plasma TV and a $500.00 VISA gift card. Tickets were $10.00 each and the proceeds of the raffle go towards insurance costs for the department. The Rhino was on display at various locations throughout the week with the most noticeable location right at the four corners where firefighter Derek Comins set up for the...
The Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department was called to a structure fire early Saturday morning. A one story abandoned house located across from the Speedway Convenience Store on Route 37 was fully involved when units arrived at the scene. A fire hydrant was located right next to the fire that made it easy to put the fire out. Units from HAVFD, SRMT Tribal Police, Bombay Fire Department, AMAU and National Grid responded to the fire. There was no power to the structure and it is...
Way back in the formative years of the fire department there was little in the way of capital purchases. The department just didn’t have any money because very few people in the community had any money. Trickle down economics meant that an organization existing on donations couldn’t be picky when it came to equipment. The late Mary Martin had a store in the White Plains area and saw a fire engine for sale. She actually bought it with her own money and contacted the fire department to come and get it. Two eager members found a way down the...
On Saturday and Sunday the Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department hosted a New York State Accident Victim Extrication Training (AVET) course. Members of the HAVFD, Akwesasne Mohawk Ambulance Unit and Westville VFD took part in the two-day course braving record-breaking temperatures and humidity to complete the course. The course was taught by State Fire Instructor Brian Gokey who was assisted by State Fire Instructor Tom Tucker. The course went over different scenarios involving motor ve...
One of the things the fire department used to do was put on a picnic for the members and their families. Sometimes this was a small event with everyone getting together for a barbeque and sometimes it was a huge event with lots of organized activities. One year it was just that, a huge event put together by the members and the ladies auxiliary. It was held on one of the islands and a lot of planning went into just getting everyone there. It was a beautiful Sunday and there was a small flotilla of boats leaving from one of the marinas to transpo...
When bad weather hits we can usually be found at the fire station waiting out a storm. One summer day the alarm went off and we were told to man our stations due to a severe storm heading right for us. We were sitting at the station and the radio starts going crazy. A tornado touched down in another town and their firefighters were watching it reporting the location and reporting damage. Luckily this region has a whole lot of nothing with some buildings here and there. The tornado touched down in an open field and meandered around digging up br...
One of the things the fire department does is provides safety coverage at the racetrack. The crew is all volunteer from within the volunteer fire department so you can see how it is specialized. Dad started his career back in the late sixties and early seventies working at the Fort Covington International Speedway. He was part of the staff. I’m not sure what he did but he was at not only at the races every week and somehow managed to get someone to pay him to be there. That stint lasted until the track was forced to shut down due to an u...
On Sunday night Cornwall Motor Speedway had a big night of racing. After a washed out first night which saw only two features run the rest of the features were run this week. There was a full racing card plus three leftover feature races from the previous Sunday. All in all, 137 laps of feature race racing. The first makeup feature race was interesting since it was the same lineup from the first twin 25, won by Laurent Laudicer, only flip flopped. They took the finishing order from the first...
I have a hard time finding a place on the Marine Unit since other firefighters live closer to the station than I do. I usually get there to see the boat loaded and someone saying there’s enough firefighters on board. One night we get a call of a boat in distress in the north channel down towards Lake St. Francis. I immediately jumped in my truck and raced down to the station. Low and behold, I got a place on the boat! It was a rather nice night for late spring until I took another look at the sky. It had turned dark and nasty with the clouds b...
The HAVFD didn’t start out in the same manner it’s operating currently. In fact, we used to be called “Cellar Savers” due to the large amount of fires that resulted in smoking basements. Well one day Dad ended up driving the engine to a fire on State Road that involved an outbuilding built on a wooden foundation. When it was finally out the chief radioed him to find out how things were going. Dad responded “We lost it, even the basement burnt.” Well, Dad had to stand tall before the man when he got back to the station. Apparently our reputat...
We got a call one night to respond to a boat on fire. It was one of those rare occasions that I got to drive a truck. Usually, I’m one of the farthest members from the station so before I get there the trucks are out of the station and moving. This time I don’t know how I did it but I was driving the truck headed to a small side road by the river. One of the members met me at the road and guided me down a cow path to the river. I looked at it and had doubts I would drive a tractor down there much less this huge honking fire truck. I took it...
During grass fire season we hear a lot of excuses. We arrived on the scene of a large grass fire that extended for acres. This fire required every piece of equipment we had staged at two roads and a long driveway. We get the fire under control and we look at all this black space and it narrows down like an arrow right to the origin, a burn barrel still smoking. We had a civilian helping us out on the line, but he wasn’t really a civilian, he was an off duty police officer. That’s when we noticed the burn barrel was right behind his house. We ha...
The springtime of the year in Akwesasne is usually punctuated by columns of smoke, blue and red lights and the rush of firefighters organizing to put out a fire. The only thing missing is the sirens. It’s not very often you need to run sirens to a grassfire so we just run lights. My very first fire was a grassfire and I responded all excited to participate in my first ever fire call. I grabbed an Indian tank and a broom and ran out to the fire line. My first mistake was thinking the fire wasn’t as hot as a structure fire. I don’t know why,...
We got called to a grass fire down on the point and we headed down there with the fire truck and our brush truck, a six wheeled monstrosity dubbed a “gamma goat”. We were at the end of a new road and could see the fire off in the fields. We jumped in the brush truck and we headed off into the field to put the fire out. We were going good until we slowed to a crawl and stopped suddenly. By the spray of mud coming off of all six wheels we knew we were stuck. We hopped out and grabbed a couple Indian Tanks, five gallon tanks strapped on our bac...
Seaway Toastmasters from Cornwall held a demonstration Toastmasters Meeting at the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino on Monday, April 7, 2008. The meeting had been requested by Monica Peters from the Casino and was attended by eleven Toastmasters and guests. Seaway Toastmaster’s is a group of people who get together to learn to become better speakers. There is no instructor; instead, each speech and meeting is critiqued by a member in a positive manner, focusing on what was done right and what could be i...
The Akwesasne Economic Development Agency (AEDA) partnered with the Akwesasne Area Management Board (AAMB) to develop a Pre-Employment Assistance Program back in March of 2007. The goal of the project was to give additional training and job placements to job seekers who needed a little boost to land that job they’ve been searching for. Dan Garrow of AAMB and Adrian McDonald of AEDA worked together to come up with a plan to make this idea a reality. A new curriculum was developed based on the s...
The Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department kicked off their annual raffle this year with a set of new prizes. This year first prize is a Custom Yamaha Rhino that has been decorated with a custom paint job, alloy wheels, aggressive tires, a winch, windshield, box cover and roof. The Rhino sports a 700 cc engine with electronic fuel injection and is perfect for the kid in all of us. Second prize is a 42” plasma TV just in time for the dreaded conversion to digital TV. If you haven’t gone d...
Just before spring in the latter days of winter, the sap starts flowing and the sugar shacks start up. You can see people gathering sap all around the woods where the maple trees have been tapped. This is a time honored tradition steeply bound in the land. One year while out and about in our Mule UTV, my son and I noticed our neighbor boiling sap in the demonstration sugar shack down the road. We stopped in and he was getting worried about his wood supply. I said I could help him out and we headed to the woods. I got my brother involved and we...
During the spring time we always had a problem with flooding. None more so than the great flood of ’81. The station was situated on a riverbank not more than fifty feet from the water. On top of that there is a low head dam right in line with the station. The station was built on land given to the HAVFD by the electric company that owned the dam. In 1981 there was a very fast thaw along with rain that swelled the river banks and busted up the ice before it had a chance to thin out. The ice went over the dam and tumbled around and jammed up righ...
One of the problems encountered in the fire service is stuck valves. Most of the time it’s caused by not using the valves for long periods of time. Myself, I was running an engine one time when another line came off and I went to charge it with water. I grabbed the handle and yanked. Nothing happened, the handle was stuck and wouldn’t budge. I grabbed with both hands and pulled. Now you have to be careful because of something called “Water Hammer” that happens when large amounts of water under pressure is suddenly released. It can shake a...
We have to operate on site and we don’t get to choose the locations that we respond to when the alarm goes off. Quite often when you see us we’re putting our gear on alongside the road. This causes some predicaments that can be hilarious or dangerous and that’s the burden of being a firefighter. For example, our gear is prepackaged with the boots already in the bunker pants to make it easier and quicker to put on. I can’t recall how many times I put my bunker pants on with the suspenders caught either between my legs or under my boot. This make...
We go out in the worst possible weather, that’s usually when Murphy’s Law asserts itself. Everyone can relate to Murphy’s Law that states “When something can go wrong, it will go wrong and at the worst possible moment.” When does the furnace act up? During a three day cold snap, of course. Same holds true for sump pumps, chimneys, cars and everything else mechanical. I remember going to a chimney fire in a complete blizzard and shutting down a woodstove with a fire extinguisher. I overheard one of the Chief’s ask the homeowner when was the las...
One thing firefighters find out right away is that they’re going to fall down a lot in their fire service career. When I first got in the fire department we were experiencing a spike in structure fires. A lot of fires were put out through the tried and true “Surround and Drown” technique since we don’t risk firefighters lives to put out garage or shed fires. At one shed fire I arrived and it was in my Uncle’s neighborhood and people had lined the road to watch. I had put on my gear and was running over to the fire when I heard someone y...
