Recently Newsday published a series of articles regarding the volunteer fire service on Long Island. These sensational articles painted a one-sided picture of the dedicated men and women who serve their neighbors and their communities in the volunteer fire service on Long Island. This response is being written the day after Thanksgiving at 6 a.m. after having returned from our third automatic fire alarm this morning. Called from bed at 1:35 a.m., 2:26 a.m. and 4:51 a.m. the men and women of the Mineola Volunteer Fire Department responded to these alarms each time ready to fight what others fear. This was in addition to being pulled from their families twice on Thanksgiving Day to answer alarms for carbon monoxide emergencies that could have turned into deadly tragedies if not for the intervention of the Mineola Volunteer Fire Department.

As Newsday states there may very well be abuses of the public trust by some Long Island fire departments just as there are similar violations in all professions. Each profession has those individuals or groups that are not the norm and paint their profession in a bad light for the public. One just has to look at the scandals in the Roslyn School District or locally at the former Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations for the Mineola School District. The NYPD had sensational cases after the Abner Louima and Amadu Dialo incidents and the FDNY is accused of having a drunken brawl in a Staten Island firehouse and firefighters allegedly having sex on duty in a Bronx firehouse. Even Newsday had problems this last year with fraudulently inflating circulation numbers to increase advertising rates. As with all these examples you need to look at the profession as a whole and not just the individual cases that taint the reputation of the entire group.

Using Newsday's own numbers, let's take a look at the Mineola Volunteer Fire Department. Out of 179 fire departments on Long Island, Mineola had the fourth best average fire tax per household. At an estimated $71 per single family household, the village residents receive well-trained, professional response to fires and other emergencies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The top three departments charge $67, $68 and $69 respectively with the highest Nassau County rate Newsday reports being $599 per single family household. When you compare Mineola to the closest eight fire departments in Nassau County in area of square miles covered (1.9), Mineola serves the greatest population (19,000) with the second cheapest costs ($750,000) and the third best response time (5:47). That response time is calculated as the time of alarm receipt until the first fire engine arrives. That does not account for the response of chiefs, in their fully equipped vehicles, or local neighbors that might be volunteer firefighters. The New York Post in an article on FDNY response times on August 12, 2005 stated the response time for the New York City Fire Department was 4:32. For the volunteers to leave their work or wake up out of bed, respond in their private vehicles to the firehouse while obeying all traffic signals and then respond the apparatus to the scene of an emergency only takes an additional 1:15 seconds. Newsday also claims that there is a recruitment and retention problem in the volunteer fire service. In many areas this is true but in Mineola over the last two years we have had to raise our membership limits in each of our three companies from 50 members to 65 members to account for the growth in our membership. As an example the village board just approved five new members at their November 16, 2005 village board meeting. In response to Newsday's claims that fire responses are decreasing one has only to look at the Mineola Volunteer Fire Department's response numbers for the past several years. The overall response numbers have remained fairly consistent, even showing a slight increase in some years.

So are the Village of Mineola residents getting what they pay for? The answer is unequivocally yes. Since 1888, before there was a Village of Mineola, volunteers have been providing fire protection in this area. We have come a long way these past 117 years. The Mineola Volunteer Fire Department has grown to include two engine companies and one ladder company manning four engines, two aerial ladders and one heavy rescue truck. We train every Sunday morning for two hours. On Monday nights, after cleaning and maintaining the apparatus and the firehouses we train for an additional two hours. In the past two years we have received specialty training on hazardous materials operations, incident command, weapons of mass destruction, terrorist bombings and continued our fire training at the Nassau County Fire Service Academy. We do all this while still maintaining full-time jobs, going to school and taking care of our families. We have a dedicated ladies auxiliary organization that supports the fire department and other charitable causes and we have one of the preeminent junior fire department programs in New York State if not the nation. Past Chief of Department Scott Strauss started as a junior firefighter as well as current assistant chiefs Connolly and Holliday. The young men and women of the Mineola Junior Fire Department are our future and a shining example of the hard work and dedication that is possessed by members of the Mineola Volunteer Fire Department.

We are your neighbors, your family, your friends as well as taxpayers in the Village of Mineola. We do what we do out of a sense of civic pride, dedication and the knowledge that we are performing a vital public service for our community. The costs to us are great with lost time from our families and friends and the inherent dangers and risks to our health and well-being every time we respond but we will continue to uphold the pride and tradition of the volunteer fire service. Newsday tries to paint an unflattering picture of the volunteer fire service on Long Island by comparing them to privileged social clubs with skyrocketing costs, extravagant member perks, declining enrollment and decreasing fire alarms, but by their own numbers they show the Mineola Volunteer Fire Department to be a cost effective, efficient fire department serving its community for the past 117 years and looking forward to the future.

Scott C. Holliday

Assistant Chief, Mineola Fire Department