All Business: 1982 - 1992

The department's fire prevention programs would change even more in the 1980s and 1990s. The Fire Prevention Week open house at the fire station began in the early 1990s, as the Chartiers Valley School District consolidated its primary schools into one building in Collier Township, ending the fire prevention program in the schools. The loss of the public elementary school was not the only major change to the Bower Hill community in the 1980s and 1990s. The John J. Kane Hospital, which had opened in 1958, closed in 1983. The county replaced it with four smaller facilities, one of which, called the John J. Kane Regional Center - Scott Township, was built across Kane Boulevard from the old facility. The county closed the fire station that had served as the dispatch center for Bower Hill and the other fire departments in the area. This service was taken over by the Scott Township Police Department for Bower Hill and the other Scott Township departments, and by Carnegie Police for the other departments in the Chartiers Valley. Bower Hill was now the primary provider of fire and EMS protection at the new Kane facility. Members stepped up training in high-rise and multiple-occupancy facility firefighting. The first years of operation of the new Kane Regional Center saw a considerable increase in Bower Hill's call volume, with the department responding several times a week to service and reset the automatic alarm system from false or malicious alarms, once or twice a year to handle small fire incidents, and sometimes several times a day to transport critically ill residents to local hospitals.

The need to care for these patients and for the residents of the community in general led Bower Hill to begin providing Advanced Life Support (ALS) ambulance service in June of 1982. At the time, the department was one of the first all-volunteer ALS services in Allegheny County, and had to overcome some serious opposition from both private and public sector EMS services in neighboring communities who used only career paramedics, and who strongly protested that the presence of volunteer ALS providers anywhere was a threat to their services and businesses. Doctor Clara Jean Ersöz, Medical Director and Vice President for Medical Affairs at St. Clair Memorial Hospital, disagreed with the naysayers, and gave Bower Hill’s paramedics medical command under her medical direction and St. Clair’s on-line medical control. Though ALS coverage was irregular at first, with only four paramedics on the roster, by 1990 the department was meeting state guidelines by providing ALS service in over 90% of the cases where it was indicated. Bower Hill became the ALS provider for all of Scott Township. The Dodge van ambulance was replaced in 1985 with a 1984 Ford cutaway modular van (“Type III” in the KKK-A-1822 spec) with a Yankee Coach “Patriot III” ambulance module, more conducive to the provision of ALS care.

The model by which the Bower Hill Volunteer Fire Department operated was changing. The community embraced the spirit of the 1980s, and that spirit was very businesslike. Firemen's Fairs were seen as frivolity, so they were discontinued. This decision was made easier when Our Lady of Grace Church began to hold a parish festival the week after the Bower Hill VFD fair, effectively destroying attendance at the fire department event. The residents expected the fire department to be a perfect supplier of service, and would tolerate no lapse. The department responded in the same spirit. Skill and professionalism became the hallmark of emergency operations. Equipment had to function perfectly. Non-emergency operations needed to be done according to business principles. The community expected no less.