Myths & Misconceptions

This one comes up more than any other, and it's a fair thing to assume. The reality is more complicated.

In many Pennsylvania communities, volunteer fire departments receive little to no tax funding. Even departments that do receive a municipal allocation typically get only a fraction of what it costs to operate. The rest has to come from somewhere else.

What things actually cost:

• A new fire engine, which runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars
• A set of protective gear for one firefighter: coat, pants, boots, helmet, gloves and hood, several thousand dollars
• A self-contained breathing apparatus, several thousand dollars for each one
• Station maintenance, insurance, fuel, equipment testing, training supplies. These costs are ongoing and substantial

In a career (paid) department, all of this is funded through your taxes. In a volunteer department, the budget relies on a mix of municipal allocations (if any), state grants, fundraisers, and direct donations from the community.

The trade-off: Volunteer firefighters donate their time. They don't get paid for responding to your emergency at 3 AM, or for the hundreds of hours of training it takes to do that safely. That saves taxpayers an enormous amount of money. In return, the community is asked to help fund the equipment and facilities through donations and fundraiser support.

When you donate to us, you're directly funding the equipment and training that protect your home and family.

Yes. The certifications are exactly the same, taught to the same national standard.

The facts:

• Pennsylvania's Firefighter I certification is the baseline for interior structural firefighting, and it is the same certification whether you're a volunteer or a career firefighter.
• The curriculum is set by the Pennsylvania State Fire Academy and follows a national professional qualifications standard.
• The written and practical exams are the same exams.
• Beyond basic certification, many volunteers pursue additional certifications: Firefighter II, Hazardous Materials Operations, Vehicle Rescue, Fire Officer, EMT, and more.
• Active volunteers train regularly, typically weekly or biweekly, to maintain their skills and stay current on new techniques, equipment, and safety procedures.

What is different:

Career firefighters train during their paid shifts and respond from the station, so they may accumulate more repetitions on certain skills simply due to volume. Volunteer firefighters fit the same training into their off-hours on top of their regular jobs and family commitments. The training itself is equivalent. What differs is how much personal time volunteers give up to complete it.

The next time you see a volunteer responding to an emergency, know that they've put in hundreds of hours of unpaid training to be able to help you safely and effectively.

No. You won't get in trouble for calling 911 in good faith.

If you genuinely believe there's an emergency, call. You smell smoke, you hear an alarm, someone looks like they need medical help, something just doesn't seem right. That's exactly what the system is for.

What happens if it turns out to be nothing:

• We show up, we check it out, we confirm everything is okay, and we leave. That's a good outcome. Nobody is upset about this.
• Firefighters would rather respond to ten calls that turn out to be nothing than miss the one that was real because someone hesitated to call.
• You won't be billed for the response. You won't be fined. You won't be lectured.

What can get you in trouble:

• Intentionally filing a false report, knowingly calling 911 to report an emergency that doesn't exist, or pulling a fire alarm as a prank. In Pennsylvania that's a crime, and it covers knowingly sending a false alarm of fire or any other emergency to anybody who deals with emergencies, official or volunteer.
• Repeatedly making malicious or prank calls to 911. This wastes resources and can divert responders from real emergencies.

There's a clear legal and moral line between "I thought there was a problem and there wasn't" (perfectly fine) and "I made up an emergency on purpose" (not fine). As long as you're calling because you genuinely believe something is wrong, you're doing the right thing.

When in doubt, call. Let us figure out whether it's an emergency. That's our job.

Fires are actually a small fraction of what fire departments do. Nationally, most of what fire departments are called to is not a fire. The rest is everything else.

What fire departments respond to:

• Medical emergencies. This is the single largest category. Many fire departments respond to cardiac arrests, strokes, falls, breathing emergencies, and other medical calls alongside or ahead of ambulance services.
• Motor vehicle accidents. Extrication (cutting people out of cars), fire standby, fluid cleanup, and scene safety.
• Hazardous materials incidents. Fuel spills, gas leaks, chemical releases, carbon monoxide calls.
• Rescue operations. Water rescue, confined space rescue, high-angle rescue, building collapse.
• Severe weather response. Downed trees and power lines, flooding, storm damage assessment.
• Public service calls. Lockouts, animal rescues, water problems, welfare checks, assisting other agencies.
• Fire alarm investigations. Responding to automatic fire alarms in buildings to determine if there's an actual fire.
• Community safety. Fire prevention education, safety inspections, smoke alarm installations, community events.

The word "fire" in "fire department" is historical. It describes where the service started, not what it does today. Modern fire departments are all-hazards emergency response organizations. Firefighting is one skill among many that firefighters train for and maintain.

No. Call 911 first. Always.

This is one of the most dangerous misconceptions, and it costs lives every year. People try to fight a fire with a garden hose or a pot of water, and by the time they realize it's beyond their control, they've lost their only window to escape safely, and the fire has grown much larger than it was when they first noticed it.

Why you should call first:

• Fire can double in size in about a minute. The time you spend looking for an extinguisher, trying to find the right approach, or running to fill a bucket is time the fire is growing exponentially.
• Response time starts when you call. If you spend 3 minutes trying to fight the fire and then call, you've added 3 minutes to the response. Those 3 minutes can be the difference between a room-and-contents fire and a total loss.
• You may not be able to call later. Smoke fills a room fast. If the fire grows while you're fighting it, you may not be able to get to a phone, or to an exit.

When a fire extinguisher is appropriate:

A fire extinguisher can be effective on a very small fire (like a wastebasket or a small grease flare-up), but only if ALL of these are true:

• You've already called 911 (or someone else has).
• Everyone is out of the building or getting out.
• The fire is small and contained to one object.
• The room isn't filling with smoke.
• You have a clear path to an exit behind you.
• You know how to use the extinguisher (PASS: Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep).

If any of those conditions aren't met, get out. A house can be rebuilt. You can't.

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.

No. It feels like the obvious thing to do, and it can make things dramatically worse.

In a fire, opening a window from the outside, breaking glass to "give someone air", introduces a rush of fresh oxygen into a hot, smoky room. Fire needs oxygen to burn. Feeding it a fresh supply can cause a rapid escalation in fire conditions, including:

• Flashover. The sudden ignition of everything in the room. Temperatures jump from already-lethal levels to far worse in seconds. This isn't survivable.
• Rapid fire spread. A fire that was contained to one room can blow out through the new opening and spread to the rest of the structure.
• Endangering the person you're trying to help. The burst of fire intensity can kill a trapped occupant who might have survived behind a closed door until firefighters arrived.

What to do instead:

• Call 911. Get firefighters on the way. They have the training, tools, and protective equipment to make a rescue safely.
• If someone is at a window calling for help. Help them climb out if you can do so safely. But don't break additional windows to "ventilate" the building. Ventilation is a deliberate tactic that firefighters coordinate carefully, opening the wrong window at the wrong time can kill people.
• Don't open doors to a room that's on fire unless you're entering to rescue someone and you have a way out. An open door feeds the fire just like an open window.

Firefighters are trained in ventilation, strategically opening roofs and windows at precise moments to release heat and smoke in a controlled way that helps, not hurts. It's one of the most dangerous and carefully timed things done at a fire. If you're not a trained firefighter, the safest thing you can do is keep windows and doors closed and let us handle it.