Spirit of generosity alive in local fire department

By Allison Sues

Local fire departments from Urbana and Danville drove a pickup truck loaded with home improvement tools to New Orleans last Tuesday.

The firefighters drove for more than 12 hours and stayed only 3, but they gave the 6 generators, 12 saws and 6 drills to the vice president of the New Orleans fire troop.

The New Orleans Fire Department will set up some sort of sign-out program so local firefighters can rent the tools and fix their hurricane-battered homes.

“It’s a tool library, so to speak,” said Trent Short, the Union president of Urbana’s local troop 1147.

Lt. Firefighter Keith Schafroph, one of the men who drove to New Orleans, said some firefighters there were choked up.

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New Orleans firefighters have had it especially hard. Many only possess what was left in their car trunk because they were on duty when the storm hit and could not go home and salvage their belongings, Schafroph said.

The New Orleans fire department lost about a third of its members from the original 750. Many quit, some evacuated with their families, and others left for different fire departments, said Urbana firefighter Fred Westhoff.

Because of this shortage, New Orleans firefighters are working cycles of 48 hours on duty, then 24 hours off.

With little time spent out of uniform, as well as the shortage of tools in the area, most of the firefighters’ homes are barely livable. Some firefighters spend their one day off for every two worked living out of their cars. Many of the firefighters’ families evacuated to find reasonable shelter, and some firefighters are living without their families.

The Urbana and Danville fire departments wanted to give these firefighters an opportunity to fix their homes and have their families return home.

“There’s a strong sense of brotherhood and sisterhood between all fire departments,” Short said. “We just wanted to help these guys-they are so beat down and tired.”

On Sept. 19, directly following Katrina’s destruction, a group of four Urbana firemen went down to New Orleans for two weeks, helping out with whatever they could.

Westhoff had been one of the firefighters to make the original journey down to New Orleans.

“Everywhere you look, everything is destroyed,” Westhoff said. “I always describe it to people like this: the way you see it on TV, it’s that, but 10,000 times worse. And New Orleans is not over. Neighborhoods are going to have to be leveled. It is going to take forever to get it rebuilt.”

For the American public living outside the directly impacted South, the hurricane can easily become a distant memory, Short said.

Gas prices have begun to climb back to normal. Newspaper headlines have moved on to other topics.

“As time goes on, the story goes away,” Short said. “Once it’s pulled off the TVs, people forget.”

But the destruction in New Orleans is an ongoing disaster that will require a lot of time and expenses to fix, Schafroph said.