The Lumberland Fire Department:

we’ll be there

In the two days that followed Tuesday evening’s vote on the Length of Service Award Program for the Lumberland fire department, we have responded to five emergency calls, one of which was another life saved. Yesterday, as I left my home once again to help someone I didn’t even know, I couldn’t help but think that the town has no idea what we do and how many times a year we are faced with life-and-death situations that require a quick response and trained personnel. It’s a 24/7 job, 365 days of the year.

So while I was being vomited on and inserting a nasal airway to get this woman to breathe again, I thought about the man that wrote the op-ed on “Lumberland’s golden parachute.” I can tell you he was not being vomited on, nor had I ever seen him at the firehouse until I and another member asked him to come down after the public meeting so that we could explain the program to him in person. He had been very vocal at the public meeting, and we truly wanted him to understand our concern with keeping our well-qualified volunteers by offering them an incentive to stay.

That said, the increase, as we told him before the article published, is 2.95 percent, not as much as seven or eight percent, as he states. The entire program would have cost $19.66 on $100,000 of property assessment. Yet he continued to take it upon himself to wage an all-out war on his volunteer fire department. He wrote questionable e-mails that circulated around the town. He challenged the very integrity of a fire department that has provided nothing short of premier service to the township.

He also said we should bill for our ambulance services. Wow. One co-pay and his share of the program would’ve been paid for two years... but we also told him we cannot bill, that we are tax based. Again, he chose not to listen and allowed his incorrect letter to be published. We were never allowed a comment to his letter because the vote was before the next publication deadlines of the local papers that ran the article. The man skewed the vote for Lumberland.

With this letter and this factual commentary on the article, we will no longer argue point for point about the published articles, e-mails or program. The issue is now behind us. If anyone needs to talk to us or has any questions, please do so directly. We drill every Monday evening at the firehouse.

In closing, yesterday one of our chiefs ran into an elderly gentleman at the post office. The man was beside himself thinking that we would no longer respond to emergencies. The chief calmed his fears and told him we have a whole lot more class than that. The man left smiling.

(Ann Steimle is President of the Lumberland Fire Department, Inc., and writes on behalf of herself and the other members of the department.)