Bucks County fire companies donate $500,000 in equipment to flood-ravaged Kentucky
For Bill Shick, coming to the aid of fire and rescue companies in flood-ravaged Eastern Kentucky wasn’t a question of if, but when.
“The minute I learned what was happening down there, I knew we had to help in some way,” said Shick, 60, fire chief and a 41-year volunteer at Ottsville Fire Co. “Those people need help, and somebody had to help them.”
Surrounding volunteer fire departments in Bucks County have donated fire and rescue equipment to the Palisades Regional Fire Rescue, a newly formed consortium of the Ottsville, Springtown, and Riegelsville fire companies.
On Thursday, fire helmets, boots, air packs, hoses, nozzles, and other firefighting and rescue gear were packed into crates and wrapped in pallets and loaded onto three trailers. Friday at 3 a.m., Shick and two other fire department volunteers will begin the 10-hour drive starting from the Ottsville Fire Co., with each volunteer driving a vehicle towing a trailer to Hindman, Kentucky, in Knott County, about 100 miles southeast of Lexington, and also to neighboring Perry County.
“Between sharing the project on our Facebook page and other fire departments sharing it, word spread quickly about needing equipment for those fire companies down there,” said Shick. “In only three days, two of the bays at my station are full. I’d estimate there’s about a half-million dollars' worth of equipment that was donated by area companies. It’s just amazing.”
While most of the donations were fire and rescue related, community members showed the foresight to donate other essential items.
“People started dropping off cleaning supplies,” said Shick. “Some guy even dropped off 15 cases of diapers.
“We’re taking all of it directly to the fire departments, not to some regional drop-off site. We want to make sure the fire companies get directly what they need from us.”
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Catastrophic flash flooding of rivers, creeks, and streams in Eastern Kentucky over the past week have decimated the region, displacing residents, causing power outages, and impacting access to fresh water, prescription medications, and medical care. Some areas experienced 14-to-16 inches of rain over a five-day period last week, beginning on July 27.
The rainfall last week resulted in the biggest 24-hour event in the past 50 years. As of Thursday afternoon, the death toll was 37.
The flood assistance project happened in a short amount of time, Shick said. Mike Helferic, of Moyer’s Services Group, Inc., a water damage restoration service in Souderton, recently shared Facebook posts from fire departments in Kentucky asking for help or equipment donations. New, used, anything would help.
“Then Mike contacted several fire departments asking us if we had anything to donate,” said Shick. “I reached out to him and told him we have hoses and some equipment we no longer use. Then I told him that somebody has to be the point man on this, to take the lead, so I did. I told him because we are now a much larger fire department — we have 100 volunteers — we have the resources to do it.
“We can’t take for granted what we have here in this part of Pennsylvania. We’re very fortunate we have these resources available to us. So, when people like those in Kentucky need help, we have to help them.”
In addition to Palisades Regional, donations came from the following volunteer fire companies: Sellersville, Upper Black Eddy, Haycock, Lower Salford, Upper Salford, Telford, Harleysville, Gilbertsville, Trappe, Red Hill, Skippack, Souderton, Slatedale, Emerald and Milford in New Jersey, as well as Moyer Services Group and the DeWeather Cares Team.
Columnist Phil Gianficaro can be reached at 215-345-3078, pgianficaro@theintell.com, and @philgianficaro1 on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Intelligencer: Bucks County fire companies donate equipment to flood-ravaged Kentucky
