From Maine to Ukraine: Firefighters donate gear to help Ukrainians respond to war

OGUNQUIT, Maine — Like most Americans, Ogunquit Fire Chief Russell Osgood got his sense of the war in Ukraine from the headlines and images he has seen in the media since Russia invaded the country in early 2022.

But that changed when Osgood attended the global Fire Department Instructors Conference in Indianapolis earlier this year and met three firefighters from Ukraine who told him stories about the horrors and devastation they had seen and experienced back home.

“They’re going to multiple fires every night, every day,” Osgood said. “Watching the news, you’re kind of separated from it. It’s not a first-hand account. But when you hear somebody talking about an incident that they went to, where a number of kids and people were killed, and they were sorting through rubble around exploded ordnance ... that’s pretty impactful.”

When Osgood returned from the conference to Maine, he had an idea how the community of Ogunquit and other fire departments throughout the region could help.

“One of the things they don’t have is a lot of equipment,” Osgood said of Ukrainian firefighters. “A lot of the stuff they have is getting shelled and damaged.”

Now through Saturday, July 1, members of the Ogunquit Fire Department are collecting personal protective equipment that it will send to their brother and sister firefighters in Ukraine. The department will contribute all donations through an effort organized, in part, by Oleg Skachko, a Ukrainian-American firefighter in Clifton, New Jersey, and run by the Polsky Family Foundation in Chicago.

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Specifically, Osgood and his staff are accepting turnout coats and pants, Nomex hoods, firefighting helmets, boots and gloves, as well as extrication gloves, axes, Halligan tools, longboards, cervical collars, disposable gloves, radios, lights, hoses, fittings and nozzles, and self-contained breathing apparatus.

Such items can be brought to the Ogunquit fire station at 15 School Street, Osgood said. For more information, particularly if you would like to contribute but are from a community far away from Ogunquit, contact Osgood at either firechief@ogunquit.gov or (207) 451-3052.

“We are pleased to be collecting equipment that we no longer use here but can be of value to the firefighters in Ukraine,” he said.

In the fall of 2001, Osgood, then a firefighter in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, went to New York City and did what he could to assist at Ground Zero, following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center just a few weeks later. To this day, he can remember the "staggering" destruction he saw in downtown Manhattan — the wreckage of the fallen towers, the fires that still burned a month later.

Now, in 2023, after listening to the Ukrainian firefighters he met, Osgood said he can only imagine such destruction happening across an entire land as one country attacks and another defends. He said Ukraine needs all the people and equipment it can get to handle all the damage and death it is experiencing.

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Ogunquit fire Capt. Scott Bourque said several fire departments in communities, near and far, have contributed materials to the cause. The donations are quickly filling up a storage garage near the municipal parking lot behind the station on School Street.

“We have already received donations from York Beach, Mechanic Falls and Pittsfield, and understand Ellsworth and many others are planning to deliver equipment,” Bourque said.

The effort began here at home, with the Ogunquit Select Board approving the donations of the protective gear, tools, and self-contained breathing apparatus that the local fire department is no longer using.

“Discovering the effort by ... Oleg Skachko to get equipment to his homeland seemed like a good fit for our surplus equipment,” Osgood said.

Osgood said he understands the magnitude of firefighting and has seen destruction and harm, and he added that firefighters are all the same around the world. Hearing the Ukrainians discuss their experiences in their war-torn country back home, however, has been “sobering,” he added.

“That’s not something you see here, thank God,” Osgood said.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Maine firefighters donate gear to help Ukrainians respond to war