My F.D. had it's Centennial back in 1997. Since then I've been to several Centennial celebrations for surrounding F.D's. I was surprised to find out that some area F.D's are only 50 years old or so, some are even younger! Just curious how old everyone else's F.D's are. I'm sure there's some Departments on the east coast that are getting close to their Bi-centennial.
The Fredonia Fire Department was reorganized in 1901. In Fredonia, NY the first fire department was volunteer. Shortly thereafter village leaders decided they should have a professional fire department which had a staff of about 15 firefighters as I recall. In 1900, the Fredonia Normal School, precursor to today's SUNY Fredonia, caught fire killing nine students and a janitor at the school. The fire department at that time was ill equipped and woefully undermanned to handle such a blaze and village leaders reorganized the fire department into the present day combination department. We have six paid staff, two part-time staff, and 120 volunteers (roughly, not all of the four fire companies are full.) Fredonia Fire has two hose companies, a truck company (hook and ladder) and the first chartered fire police company in New York State.
well, our department was founded in 1993, we're from Nicaragua, and i'm surprised to see how old your fire dept. are, we are very very young in this, as I see, and we still have a lot to learn and to achieve. greeting from Nicaragua!
That's a shame. It's too bad that "back in the day", they never gave a thought about passing along the historical aspects of the Department.
So we know that your F.D. goes at least back to 1903 then. I take it that Woodhull started out as a Volunteer F.D. and then around 1948 became a Fire Protection District?
Lockeport volunteer Fire department In Nova Scotia Canada was formed in 1880, we just compleated our 130 yr. anniversary with a history book on our past and present Fire Department.
We celebrated our centennial in 1988 but since then found new evidence dating the Department back to 1872. so we could have another part in 2012 for 130th maybe???
The Baltimore City Fire Dept is 150+ years old. Most of the houses still have poles. They also have cobble stone bays so the horses could get traction, and spiral stairs so the horses could not go up stairs.
The Community of Verbena was formed in 1869 & the fire department was certified by the State of Alabama in 1975. Prior to 1975 it's unclear just how long the citizens where running old military & farm trucks to fires. I do know for fact that Verbena was the first certified station in our county.