Date: April 04, 2006

Picatinny Fire Department serves community inside, outside gates

     When accidents happen and someone gets hurt, what do people do? They call 911.

When a tanker truck overturns or gasoline leaks from a car, what do people do? They call 911.

When a couple of people find an old explosive device, what do they do? They call 911.

There is an obvious pattern here, but it is not just the call to 911, it is also the people who answer the 911 call.

Here on post, and sometimes off post, too, those calls are often answered by the Picatinny Fire Department.

“If ever there’s a problem and people don’t know who to call, they call the fire department,” said Picatinny firefighter John Vidal. “Cops deal with bad guys. Firefighters deal with everything else.”

Picatinny residents and employees are in a fortunate position because like surrounding communities, the firefighters here are well trained to answer a variety of emergency calls, said Picatinny Fire Chief Mark Sileikis. However, unlike firefighters in most surrounding communities, Picatinny’s firefighters are full-time employees.

Surrounding communities rely on not only their own volunteers to support their emergency calls, but also on neighboring communities’ first responders for assistance, Sileikis explained. The sharing of resources is called mutual aid.

On a January evening the skills of Picatinny’s firefighters were put to the test when a Picatinny Police Department dispatcher received a call that a 3-year-old boy on post had stopped breathing.

Firefighters Jeff Baird, Anthony Roberts, Mike Esposito and Vidal responded.

The team reached the house within two minutes, which is slightly quicker than response times in most surrounding communities, said Sileikis.

Although is was a mere 120 seconds, those were the longest two minutes the firefighters have experienced in a while, said Vidal. “It seemed like forever.”

Roberts and Vidal were the first to run into the house, while Baird and Esposito collected their equipment, Vidal said.

Usually when a young child is not breathing it is as a result of choking, drowning or suffocating, explained Vidal. However, the child did not appear to suffer from any of those, he said.

The team provided artificial breathing for the child and oxygen to his lungs, said Baird, and they eventually got him breathing on his own, although it was shallow breathing.

“Seconds took forever — not just for the parents, but for us, too,” Vidal said.

In the mean while, said Baird, paramedics from Saint Clare’s Hospital arrived to pick up the boy.

“A little after the ambulance and paramedics showed up, they brought him downstairs and as soon as he hit the cold air, he shot up and started crying,” said Baird.

“That’s the best noise I could have heard,” Vidal said.

The mutual-aid response by the paramedics was necessary, said Baird, because although Picatinny has an ambulance on post, it is staffed only 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. So when Picatinny’s ambulance is unavailable, the firefighters depend on communities outside the gate for transport.

Mutual aid

Morris County Fire Coordinator Jack Alderton said Picatinny firefighters provide communities outside the gates with not only manpower, but also with unique expertise.

Picatinny provides some services over and above what’s considered regular mutual aid, he said. In addition to firefighters providing assistance in fighting fires and medical response, other Picatinny personnel are available to provide bomb response.

“If there’s a bomb incident, we look to them,” Alderton said explaining that although the sheriff’s department has the ability to respond to a bomb incident, the county doesn’t.

Enhancement is the key to mutual aid, Alderton said. “They enhance our hazmat, decontamination and technical-rescue capabilities.”

Picatinny provided mutual aid to surrounding communities about 50 times last year, mostly for fire support or to respond to hazardous-materials incidents, and received mutual aid about 20 times, Sileikis said.