Frequently Asked Questions

Call 911 any time you believe there's a threat to life, property, or safety. You don't need to be certain. If you think something is wrong, call. Dispatchers are trained to help you figure out what's happening.

Common reasons to call 911:

• Fire or smoke, even if you're not sure it's a real fire
• A medical emergency: someone is unconscious, not breathing, having chest pain, having a seizure, or seriously injured
• A car accident with injuries or a blocked roadway
• You smell gas or suspect a gas leak
• Carbon monoxide alarm is sounding
• Someone is in danger or a crime is in progress

When in doubt, call. You'll never get in trouble for calling 911 in good faith. A false alarm is always better than a delayed response to a real emergency. We'd rather show up and find out everything is fine than arrive too late because someone hesitated.

Get out, stay out, and call 911. That's the priority, in that order.

1. Alert everyone in the house. Yell "Fire!" as you move. Don't assume everyone already knows.
2. Get out immediately. Use your planned escape route. If a door feels hot, don't open it. Use your second way out. Crawl low under smoke where the air is cleaner.
3. Close doors behind you as you leave. A closed door holds back fire and smoke, and keeps the air behind it survivable for far longer than an open room. That buys time for anyone still inside and slows the fire's spread.
4. Go to your meeting place outside. This is how you confirm everyone got out. If you don't have a meeting place, pick one now. A mailbox, a neighbor's yard, a tree.
5. Call 911 from outside. Use a cell phone or a neighbor's phone. Don't go back inside to call.
6. Do NOT go back inside for any reason. Not for pets, not for valuables, not for people. Tell firefighters who or what is still inside. We have the gear and training to go in after them.

The U.S. Fire Administration puts it at less than two minutes to get out once the smoke alarm sounds. The most dangerous thing you can do is underestimate how fast fire moves. Get out first. Everything else can wait.

Every 10 years. Smoke alarms have a limited lifespan. The sensors degrade over time, and after 10 years the alarm may not detect smoke reliably, even if it still chirps when you press the test button.

How to check the age: Look on the back of the alarm for a manufacture date. If there's no date, or the alarm is older than 10 years, replace it now.

Battery maintenance:

• Alarms with replaceable batteries: Replace the batteries at least once a year. A good habit is to swap them when you change the clocks for daylight saving time.
• Sealed 10-year lithium battery alarms: These last the life of the alarm, no battery changes needed. When the battery dies, you replace the entire unit. These are a good option if you tend to forget battery changes.
• Hardwired alarms: These are wired into your home's electrical system and have a backup battery. Replace the backup battery annually and replace the entire unit every 10 years.

Test every alarm monthly by pressing the test button. If it doesn't sound, replace the battery. If it still doesn't sound, replace the alarm.

Cooking. Cooking causes about half of all home fires in the United States. The biggest single factor inside the kitchen is cooking left unattended: a quarter of the fires, and half of the deaths.

The pattern is almost always the same: someone puts something on the stove, leaves the room, and gets distracted. A pot boils over. Oil overheats. A towel sits too close to a burner. Minutes later, there's a kitchen fire.

How to prevent cooking fires:

• Stay in the kitchen when frying, grilling, or broiling. If you must leave, even for a minute, turn off the burner.
• Keep the stovetop clear. Towels, paper, wooden utensils, pot holders, and food packaging shouldn't be anywhere near the burners.
• Don't cook if you're drowsy, medicated, or have been drinking. Impaired cooking is a significant fire risk.
• Heat oil slowly and watch it constantly. If you see wisps of smoke, the oil is too hot. Turn it down immediately.
• Keep a lid nearby whenever you're cooking with oil. If a grease fire starts, sliding a lid over the pan is the fastest, safest response.
• Keep a fire extinguisher in or near the kitchen, and know how to use it before you need it.

Call 911 immediately if you suspect a heart attack. Do not drive yourself to the hospital. Time is critical. The sooner treatment begins, the better the outcome.

According to the American Heart Association, warning signs may include:

• Chest discomfort. Pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain in the center of the chest that lasts more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back
• Discomfort in other areas of the upper body. One or both arms, the back, neck, jaw, or stomach
• Shortness of breath. With or without chest discomfort
• Other signs. Breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea, a rapid or irregular heartbeat, feeling unusually tired, feeling lightheaded

Important: Chest pain or discomfort is still the most common heart attack symptom in women, the same as in men. What differs is that women more often get symptoms alongside it, or instead of it, that people don't associate with a heart attack: anxiety, shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting, an upset stomach, pain in the shoulder, back or arm, and unusual tiredness or weakness.

Not all heart attacks are dramatic. Some start slowly with mild discomfort. People often wait too long because they think it's indigestion, anxiety, or they don't want to "bother" anyone. If something feels wrong, call 911. EMS can evaluate you and begin treatment in the ambulance, treatment that can limit heart damage and save your life.

This information is for general awareness only. It's not medical advice. Call 911 for any medical emergency.

Natural gas is odorless. The rotten egg smell is added intentionally so you can detect leaks. If you smell it, take it seriously every time.

1. Leave the house immediately. Get everyone out. Leave the door open behind you to help the gas vent.
2. Do NOT turn on or off any lights, appliances, or switches on your way out. An electrical spark can ignite gas. That includes light switches, fans, garage door openers, and doorbells.
3. Don't light matches, lighters, or candles.
4. Do NOT stop to phone from inside the house. Make the call once you're outside. You should be leaving, not standing in the building dialing.
5. Once you're outside and at a safe distance, call 911 and then call your gas company's emergency line.

If the smell is faint and comes and goes, it could still be a leak, just a smaller one. Don't ignore it. Ventilate if you can (open windows and doors on your way out), then call for help from outside.

If you hear hissing near a gas line or appliance, that's a significant leak. Get out immediately.

A fire escape plan takes one conversation to make and can save your family's life. Do it tonight.

Step by step:

1. Draw a floor plan of your home showing every room, door, and window. It doesn't have to be pretty. A rough sketch works.
2. Mark two ways out of every room. The first is usually the door. The second is usually a window. If a bedroom window is too high to jump from, consider a fire escape ladder, sold at most hardware stores.
3. Pick a meeting place outside. Somewhere specific that everyone knows: the mailbox, a neighbor's driveway, a tree. This is where you go so you can count heads and know everyone got out.
4. Walk through the plan with your family. Everyone, including kids, should know the routes and the meeting place.
5. Practice at least twice a year. Practice at night, too. That's when most fatal fires happen and when disorientation is worst. Time yourselves. You should be out in under two minutes.

Important details people forget:

• Can everyone open every window on their escape route? Some windows are painted shut or have broken mechanisms. Check them now.
• Do children know how to unlock and open windows? Practice with them.
• If someone has mobility limitations, who helps them and by what route?
• Once you're out, stay out. Never go back inside for anything.

Tell us you're interested. Call the station at (814) 476-7321, message us on Facebook, or fill in the form on our Join page. You don't need experience or training to start.

Next, you meet with our chief and our president for an interview, and you complete child abuse clearances and a criminal background check. Then we enroll you in training for the role you choose. Our answer on training covers what that involves.

Members must be at least 18 years old. Young people ages 14 to 17 can join as junior members with the signed consent of a parent or guardian. You don't need to live in McKean to join.

Because the call needs more than the ambulance brings.

• People. An ambulance carries a crew of two. A cardiac arrest needs people rotating on compressions before they tire. Getting somebody out on a stretcher, down stairs or across a yard, takes four. A crash with more than one patient takes more again.
• Equipment. We carry oxygen, an AED and medical supplies, and at a crash the tools to open a vehicle up. The gear's on the truck, so the truck comes.
• The scene. Spilled fuel, a live vehicle, downed wires, traffic coming around a bend at somebody kneeling in the road. That gets handled while the medics work.

Two people and a stretcher often aren't enough.

No, and counting on it is one of the deadliest mistakes you can make.

Your sense of smell doesn't work while you're asleep. When you enter deep sleep, your brain stops processing smells. Carbon monoxide, the gas that kills most fire victims, is odorless to begin with. But even the smoke itself won't wake you.

What actually happens in a fire at night:

• Modern furnishings (synthetic fabrics, polyurethane foam, plastics) produce thick, toxic smoke that fills a room much faster than the solid-wood furniture of previous generations. A room can become unsurvivable in about two minutes.
• The toxic gases in smoke, especially carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, cause disorientation and loss of consciousness before you feel heat or see flames. People don't wake up coughing and run out. They inhale toxic gas, lose consciousness, and never wake up.
• Children sleep through it especially easily, and so do adults who have been drinking or taking something to help them sleep. Smoke at a concentration that will kill you is not a concentration that reliably wakes you.

This is why smoke alarms exist. They're designed to detect smoke at levels far below what would wake a sleeping person, and to produce a sound loud enough to alert you while there's still time to escape.

The takeaway:

• Install smoke alarms in every bedroom, outside every sleeping area, and on every level of your home.
• Test them monthly.
• Replace batteries annually (or use 10-year sealed alarms).
• Replace the entire unit every 10 years.
• Never disable a smoke alarm. If it false-alarms from cooking, move it rather than removing the battery.

Smoke alarms are the reason you'll wake up. Without them, you probably won't.