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A Half
Century of
Service: 1973 - 1974
Bower Hill
Volunteer Fire
Department celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 1974. From
August 7th
to August 10th, the department grounds hosted a festival in
honor of
this milestone. The “Monte Carlo Week” and parade were very well
attended. This
was the first such fair and parade in Bower Hill since the 1930s. The
community
once again saw its fire department as a source of pride, and a public
asset.
The commemorative booklet published to mark the event contained
historic and
current photographs, a history of the department, the Ladies Auxiliary
and the
Junior Fire Brigade and advertisements from local businesses and
well-wishers.
It is a snapshot of the department and the community.
The
department
was
particularly proud if its new 1973 mini-pumper
and
light rescue truck, which had replaced the old Jeep power plant and the
GMC Panel Truck that had been relegated to mini-pumper and squad duties
since 1969. This apparatus was built
by
Pierce Manufacturing Company on a Ford chassis, and had a pump capacity
of only 300GPM. It was emblematic of the era. The department had
embraced the
concept of “quick and light fire attack” which said that light
vehicles,
minimally equipped and with pump capacities of less than 500GPM were
capable of
faster response and could contain and extinguish most fires more
economically
than a full-size heavy-duty pumper. This
concept
depended on the constraints of the vehicle technology of the day, when
a
full-size fire engine was in fact comparatively slow. Technology would
soon
overtake the “light attack” concept. This vehicle would be the last
pumping
engine the department would own that had a manual transmission and
gasoline
engine. All subsequent pumpers would be
diesel
powered and equipped with automatic transmissions, and would have pump
capacities of 1500GPM or more.
Though the
fire
apparatus
got the attention, the ambulance was still answering most of the calls.
The
early 1970s saw another new acronym enter the department’s vocabulary:
EMS,
which stands for Emergency Medical Service. Until this time, the
ambulance was
merely a vehicle that provided rapid patient transportation. Any care
that was
given by
the ambulance crew was simple first aid. It was presumed to be true
that only
licensed physicians and nurses were capable of providing more advanced
care.
But during the Vietnam War, the military began to train
non-medically-licensed
soldiers, soon known as paramedics, to provide advanced care in the
field.
This, they found, saved lives. Now, instead of the ambulance rushing
the
patient to the hospital, it rushed care to the patient.
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