About Us

A lot more than fight fires. Modern fire departments are all-hazards emergency responders. On any given day, a call could be:

• Firefighting. Houses and other buildings, vehicles, brush, chimneys
• Medical emergencies. Cardiac arrest, strokes, falls, allergic reactions, overdoses. In most departments, medical calls make up the majority of responses.
• Vehicle accidents. Extrication (cutting people out of wrecked cars), scene safety, hazard mitigation (fuel spills, downed power lines)
• Hazardous materials. Gas leaks, chemical spills, carbon monoxide investigations
• Rescue operations. Water rescue, technical rescue, elevator entrapments, people trapped by collapse
• Fire prevention. Safety inspections, smoke detector programs, community education, school visits
• Public service. Lift assists for people who've fallen, lockouts, flooding and storm damage, animal rescues

Firefighters train to handle almost any emergency that threatens life or property.

Yes. We're a volunteer fire department. Our firefighters are volunteers. They have day jobs, families, and lives just like you. When the alert goes off, they drop what they're doing and respond.

This is true of the vast majority of fire departments in Pennsylvania and across rural America. According to the National Fire Protection Association, most firefighters in the United States are volunteers.

Volunteer doesn't mean amateur. The certifications are exactly the same whether you earn them as a volunteer or as a career firefighter. The state sets the curriculum and the standard behind it is national. The difference is that volunteers fit that training around a job and a family, without compensation, because this is their community, and protecting it matters to them.

We serve McKean, in Erie County, Pennsylvania: the borough, the township, and the mixed suburban and rural ground around them.

Our coverage area includes residential neighborhoods, farms, commercial properties, and sections of major roadways. The terrain ranges from developed neighborhoods to wooded rural land, which means our responses can vary from a house fire down the street from the station to a vehicle accident on a back road miles away.

We also respond outside our primary area through mutual aid, a system where neighboring departments help each other on larger incidents. If a neighboring community has a working building fire that overwhelms their resources, we go help. And when we need help, they come to us. This cooperation is essential in areas served by volunteer departments.

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.

It can look like overkill when three or four vehicles show up for one call, but there are good reasons for it:

Different vehicles carry different equipment. An engine carries water and hose. A truck carries ladders and ventilation equipment. A rescue carries the tools for cutting people out of wrecked cars. A single vehicle can't carry everything needed for every type of emergency, so the right combination is dispatched based on the call type.

It takes a certain number of people. A fire cannot be worked safely without them. A building fire, for example, requires an attack crew, a backup crew, a pump operator, a ladder operator, and an incident commander, at minimum. Each vehicle brings additional firefighters.

Safety regulations. OSHA's "two-in, two-out" rule requires that before firefighters enter a burning building, at least two additional firefighters must be standing by outside, ready to rescue them if something goes wrong. That alone means four people have to be there before anyone can go inside.

Mutual aid. On larger incidents, units from neighboring departments respond to help. A working building fire in a volunteer district can easily involve trucks from three or four departments.

We'd rather have the people and the equipment there and not need them than need them and not have them. Sending too little to an escalating emergency costs time, and time is something we can never get back.

People use these terms interchangeably, but they're actually different vehicles designed for different jobs:

Fire Engine (Pumper)

• Carries water (usually 500-1,000 gallons) and a pump
• Carries hose, lots of it, for connecting to hydrants and putting water on the fire
• The workhorse of any fire department, and usually the first to arrive

Ladder Truck (Tower Truck / Aerial)

• Carries an aerial ladder or platform, typically 75 to 100+ feet
• Carries ground ladders of various sizes
• Carries ventilation equipment (fans, saws) and forcible entry tools
• Used for reaching upper floors, ventilating roofs, and providing elevated water streams
• Usually does not carry water or a pump (depends on the truck)

Rescue Vehicle

• Carries specialized rescue equipment, hydraulic extrication tools ("Jaws of Life"), stabilization equipment, rope rescue gear, confined space equipment
• Used primarily for vehicle accidents, building collapses, and technical rescue situations

Tanker (Water Tender)

• Carries a large volume of water (typically 1,000-3,500 gallons) for areas without fire hydrants
• Essential in rural districts where the nearest hydrant may be miles away

Not every department has every type. Which vehicles a department operates depends on the community it serves, the hazards in its area, and its budget.

It looks destructive, but it's one of the most important things firefighters do at a building fire. It's called ventilation, and it saves lives, both the people inside and the firefighters.

Here's why it matters:

A burning building fills with superheated smoke and toxic gases. That smoke is often more deadly than the flames themselves. It is superheated, pitch black, and carries carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and other lethal gases. It builds down from the ceiling, filling rooms from the top down.

Ventilation gives that smoke and heat a way out.

• Cutting a hole in the roof (vertical ventilation) lets the superheated gases escape upward, which clears the interior for search and rescue crews and reduces the chance of flashover, a sudden, deadly ignition of everything in the room.
• Breaking windows (horizontal ventilation) creates cross-ventilation that pushes smoke out and lets cooler air in, improving visibility and survivability inside.

Without ventilation, conditions inside get worse fast. Temperatures climb, visibility drops to zero, and the whole room can catch at once, or the fire can blow back out when someone opens a door. Ventilation is timed with the crew going in. It has to happen at the right time and in the right place, or it can make things worse.

It's not random destruction. Every broken window and every hole in the roof is a deliberate tactical decision made to improve conditions inside the building and give trapped occupants a better chance of survival.

Mutual aid is an agreement between neighboring fire departments to help each other when needed. It's the backbone of volunteer firefighting.

How it works: When an incident exceeds what one department can handle, or when a department's volunteers aren't available in sufficient numbers, dispatch automatically requests additional units from neighboring departments. This isn't a sign of failure; it's the system working exactly as designed.

When mutual aid is used:

• Working building fires. A confirmed building fire almost always triggers mutual aid. It takes far more people and equipment than one volunteer department usually has on hand at any given moment.
• Multiple simultaneous calls. If we're already on a call and a second emergency comes in, a neighboring department covers it.
• Specialized equipment. Not every department has every piece of equipment. Mutual aid lets departments share specialized resources like aerial ladders, heavy rescue tools, or water tankers.
• Staffing coverage. During daytime hours when volunteers are at work, a department might call for help to make sure enough people respond.

In Erie County, mutual aid is a well-coordinated system. Departments train together, know each other's equipment, and operate under common procedures. When you see trucks from multiple departments on one scene, that's mutual aid in action: neighboring communities working together to protect each other.

These terms all refer to organizations that fight fires and respond to emergencies, but they have different historical and organizational meanings:

Fire Department

• A general term for any organization that provides fire protection and emergency services to a community. Can be career (paid), volunteer, or a combination.
• Often used as the umbrella term regardless of the organization's official name.

Fire Company

• A specific organizational unit within a fire department or fire district. A fire company is typically a single station with its own vehicles, membership, and identity.
• In Pennsylvania and the Northeast, many volunteer fire organizations are incorporated as independent fire companies. They're self-governing nonprofits, not divisions of a municipal department.

Hose Company

• A historical term from the early days of organized firefighting. Before fire engines carried their own water supply, separate companies specialized in different tasks: hose companies handled the hose and water delivery, engine companies operated the pumps, and ladder companies handled rescue and ventilation.
• Many departments that were founded in this era kept the name even as their role expanded. Ours dates back to 1941.

Today, these distinctions are mostly historical. We provide firefighting, vehicle rescue, emergency medical services and fire police. The name connects us to where we came from.

Volunteer departments are short of members across the country, Pennsylvania included. The ranks have been shrinking for decades, and the number of volunteer fire departments has dropped with them, with departments merging or closing entirely.

Why this is happening:

• Time demands. Being a volunteer firefighter today requires far more training than it did decades ago, and the basic certification runs over months of coursework and practical training. Many people simply don't have that kind of time to give, especially when balancing work and family.
• Economic changes. More people commute long distances for work, which means they're not in their community during the day when calls come in. Two-income households have less available time for volunteerism. The economy doesn't leave as much room for unpaid commitments.
• Population shifts. Young people are leaving rural communities for cities and suburbs, taking the next generation of potential volunteers with them.
• Cost and fundraising burden. A single fire engine runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and protective gear is several thousand for one firefighter. Many volunteer departments spend enormous time and energy fundraising just to keep the doors open and the trucks running.
• Aging membership. As older volunteers retire and fewer young people join, departments get smaller. Smaller departments mean more burden on the remaining members, which leads to burnout, which leads to more departures. It's a downward cycle.
• Call volume. Many departments are running more calls than ever (especially medical calls), with fewer people to cover them.

Why it matters to you:

When a volunteer fire department doesn't have enough members to respond, response times get longer. If a department can't maintain minimum staffing, it may not be able to respond at all, and mutual aid from the next department over takes even longer. The system that protects your home and family depends on people in your community volunteering their time.

If you're able to volunteer, in any capacity, not just as a firefighter, we need you. See our Volunteering & Joining section to learn how to get involved.