Hey All,
So I'm going to continue with answering your questions about the little Hamlet that is...Alplaus! Many of you have asked what are fire district encompasses: what kind of buildings we have, what we respond to, how many trucks we have, how many members we have, etc.

So Alplaus Fire Department is a part of the Town of Glenville Fire District, District #2 is our actual town identifier. The Town of Glenville is made up of 7 Fire Departments: Beukendaal, Glenville Hill, West Glenville, Thomas Corners, East Glenville, Alplaus & Scotia. Scotia is unique because it is located in the Village of Scotia-which declares itself as a self-sufficient entity but receives town funding for emergency services-it gets a share of the Town Fire Tax that is split up between the 7 fire departments-but it also is a part of the village budget since it does have 14 paid firemen.

Anyways back to Alplaus-our Fire District is approximately 10-15 square miles. While the Hamlet of Alplaus is only about 1-2 square miles-our response according to the pre-drawn district lines encompasses the areas surrounding Alplaus within the Town of Glenville. Like most Fire Districts now, our calls are mostly made up of Medicals-at present we have 6 Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT's). Our district only utilizes a Basic Life Support (BLS) license as do most of the Fire departments within the Town of Glenville with exception of Scotia, and thus Mohawk Ambulance Service is our Advanced Life Support (ALS) & transport provider. None of the Fire Departments transport-ie we don't have ambulances. The fire departments basically first-respond. I also work for Mohawk Ambulance as a Paramedic-having completed my studies this past May & being certified in August of this year.

On the fire side of things, we have a industrial park within Alplaus--it sounds bigger than it really is. Consisting of maybe 3-4 businesses, the biggest fear of the industrial park is that only a few of the businesses actually supply us with information regarding their Hazardous Materials (HAZMAT) which are stored on site & what functions are actually done there. We also share part of the Schenectady County Airport which also houses the Stratton Air National Guard base. We have the Guard base side & Thomas Corners (TC) has the other side. We have one more big "call" bringer-the Mohawk River. We are a part of the Schenectady County Water Task Force which includes FD's with water-vessels: Scotia, Beukendaal, Thomas Corners, Alplaus, along with FD's outside of the town of Glenville but within Schenectady County: Niskayuna FD #2, Schonowe & the City of Schenectady (Paid). The Schenectady Water Task Force covers approximately 25 miles of the Mohawk River.

Lastly, we work very well with our Mutual aid companies which are anyone within Town of Glenville as well as those in Schenectady & Saratoga counties. We respond mutual aid often with the Rexford FD located within Saratoga County, as well as Thomas Corners (TC), East Glenville & Stratton Air Guard.

On average we do about 285 +/- calls a year not bad for a small department w/20 active members. Sorry this was a long one but I'll touch on our apparatus and actual fire station in the next post.
Layter,
Runx