Fire Police: Keeping first responders, public safe
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - Members of the Mount Carmel Township Fire Police. From L-R 1st Lt. Matt Richardson, Ofc. Dianne Barskey, 2nd Lt. Joe Politza, and Capt. Bob Yeager.
ATLAS, Northumberland County – Among Pennsylvania’s first responders are a group tasked with traffic and crowd control at emergency scenes and other events — the special fire police.
Fire police officers are, like most firefighters in the Commonwealth, are volunteers, and answer the call to service at any time of day or night, often forgoing sleep or time with family to keep first responders and the public safe.
“We’re trying to keep everybody safe — the public, firefighters, police, and other responders on calls,” Dianne Barskey, an officer with the Mount Carmel Township Fire Police, said Tuesday.
According to Pennsylvania law, fire police “shall have full power to regulate traffic and keep crowds under control at or in the vicinity of any fire on which their companies are in attendance and to exercise other police powers necessary to facilitate and prevent interference with the work of firemen in extinguishing fires. They shall also have the police powers necessary to perform their duties when functioning as special fire police at any function, event or parade conducted by and under the auspices of a volunteer fire company, or another event, function or parade conducted by an organization other than a volunteer fire company, provided that the request to perform these duties is made by the governing body of the city, borough, town, township or home rule municipality in which the event will be conducted, or when accidents, floods or any other emergencies require performance of traffic-control and crowd-control duties.”
Barskey said that, recently, her and her colleagues have been met with verbal abuse from motorists who are less than eager to follow a detour, or have been put at risk by drivers failing to slow down and obey the Move Over law, which became effective in April.
“So many times, we get the public just racing past us and not paying attention to what’s going on. They’re trying to rubberneck and see the accident or whatever is going on and that causes more problems,” Barskey said. “We’re trying to bring attention to that.”
In some cases, those drivers create a safety hazard for first responders, such as striking a supply line at a fire scene.
“I know it’s an inconvenience, but [following the detour] is necessary,” Barskey said.
At a crash near Locust Summit yesterday, she said she was nearly struck by a driver who drove past the detour.
“They decided that they were going to go through two people stopping traffic,” Barskey said. “We can’t have that. If we’re standing there, we’re standing there for a reason. If there’s cones across the road, they’re there to stop you, not for you to drive through, not to drive over, not to have fun and drag down the road on us, they’re there to stop you and get you to go a different direction.”
Barskey said her unit handled nearly 200 calls last year, including fires, police incidents, parades, accidents, and funeral processions, among others.
The unit is, like most fire companies, solely volunteer and dependent on donations and fundraisers. Most equipment — vests, signs, lighting, and more — is purchased by either volunteers or through donations.
“We would love to have more volunteers,” Barskey said. “Any support we can get. If you can donate $5 or $10 to help us get new gear, we need more cones for our members, we need more wands for our members.”
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