this got in the country because this was pretty pretty rural pretty country back in those days one of the things that happened there was that middle canada fire chief who was dick price at that time  suggested to the city of venice heights that two things either venice had started their own for any parent or little canada felt that they had to cut their response time so why not start your own department and the council at that time had taken that suggestion and they went out in seeing if there was any people interested in starting this department dick pillsbury who was our first your chief took it upon himself to himself and with the help of hank tess here who was the was one of the council people at the time and they they worked to get agreed to provide us with a new building the guys worked on the plumbing they did the problem in the electrical work and everything in the building so or the shell was put up by a contractor of the buil for the building and then the guys put the building together after that with all the plumbing fixtures and hanging cabinets and all that type of stuff so it was it was a work effort by those first charter members of that department wisconsin to be our tanker got all our water because we didn't have city water means we had to haul our water to the fires and deck an army from the station we call it we called out station two for the day we were pretty happy to get what we got all our surrounding be part months were notified of a fire by telephone they had such as a red phone in your house and that was the fire phone called come through they got notified by phone that we put this department together so fast that when we called northwest balances we need thirty fire forms installed in these homes and they have to be in place by january first of nineteen seventy tool when we take over fire protection they said this is physically impossible so this forced us to look at radio communication and we put fam receivers in each one of the members homes and we were able to purchase them and have the proper frequencies put into arm and it's like  we jumped ahead of the rest of the departments but it only happened because there was a back west of the wall we couldn't get the telephone system implemented so we we jumped a step ahead and it cost a little more money upfront but we we were we started right out with radio hundred seventy one we got the console to agreed to buy us a new fire truck so we put this truck on order and it took seven to twelve months to get this truck but the moment the capital city mutual aid association found out that we did have a new truck on order they accepted us into the mutual aid association which at that time was about seventeen member fire departments once you are a member this is a binding agreement that if you need help or the fire you call and they will come so you have much mutual aid help at your fingertips it seemed like years because we sat there and waited for this little radio that we had in the house to go off and it was quite an exciting moment the first circle was on mcmenemy and it was a johnson residence and it was a chimney fire  well proceeded to the fire hall and got there and it was just kind of a mass confusion i mean it's we didn't really know what to do exactly what we had trained but we never really experience that first fryer but we the first year that we were in service little canada responded the same as they would have prior to us forming a fire department so that the homeowners  residents had the same protection that they were used to anyway and we were kind of an i learning mode it's not just one you just can't join and figures all yours and your wife has to be involved and gone on with everything you're doing they held i believe monthly meeting to discuss different topics how they could help the fire service the money for channel then back to the fire way today riding on a fire vehicle on the rear bumper is the illegal by osha but i'm not all thirty seven g m see when we were responding to a fire there was two firemen riding the rear tail board hanging on with one hand and putting the breathing apparatus on but there are other hand and nobody ever fell off thank god but they got some pretty wild right to go into the fire and that way they were ready to enter the house when we got there talk to night and we got a call it was very windy very dry summer day we went down i drove the truck down there with the chief she got a little scared because i was going to france and he said slow down slow down weekend the wind chill was seventy five below on friday night and it was eighty three below on saturday night we had a we had a fire on friday night which was not real serious but we had to get up in the middle of the night and go out and the dangers on the trucks frozen it was just one thing after the other it just was not a good night to be out and i know we came back and we were cold from that knowledge our gear was frozen up and we had it hanging in the fire hall trying to dry it out and everything else and the next morning we all got up and we were down to the station and were trying to put things away and get things got another fire call and it was like a three ball wind chill and i remember going directly to the fire and it came in as a chimney fire so that well maybe it's not too bad we got there in the  side of the house was in flames and i remember sitting in the in the my pickup just sitting there looking at it and i'm thinking i'm not even caught out from last night yet and here i am going to go back out tonight again i'm go be crazy for doing this but i thought well here we go we got out and we thought the fire and we were there for a couple three hours and we got back to the fire hall and and that's when i had learned that one of our firefighters his chooks walking to the fire station his car would start and he was there to make it to the fire and i have never forget that weekend as long as i live the dedication of the get up in the middle of the night and go out in the cold freeze again for a second in a row that's that's true dedication i got caught in the backlash one time in a fire and i was on a nozzle venders two other guys in back to me  a major fire over on the many road basin where we had two crews try to get down the basement but the fire up they can get down i was on my third tank a very already and i was on the first floor and we were just put out spot fires i had work right so i got second and third degree burns around both wrists and i got badly burnt around my neck top my ears got burnt even though i had a smashed gone i still got basically cooked inside my are that my partner not sure who that was right now well let's get to al out of here and we backed out and i remember as getting close to the door and somebody grabbed me and i basically kind of collapsed just due to being caught and a half hour period i drank a gallon half of water and that normally do i drink that much water and my suit that i had on was completely saturated you could wring it out that scared me quite a bit and took me a good six months to a year to feel comfortable going back into i was fired as a little scared to do it it wasn't sure i'm going to come out of it again that scared the hell out but after a year that was gutsy as ever again people i don't know who they were the mystery still goes on who did it actually did it i wasn't involved with what did idea i suspect that skep anson richard dance and i suspect he this kind of wonder we never had any problems was hard splay it was all dead serious from the moment that bell rang but it back at the station we knew how to have laughs and good time and that kept the man coming back to their station they enjoyed being involved now we used to date back that were in our fire station  after the training sessions and after the girls and after many fire calls and especially the grass fires it was hot and dry and you worked extremely hard and the members would have a little  teetotaller nice man john metro and he showed up where there's wife to tour the fire station and richard perle's barry was sick chief at that time and he come in there and he took one look at that refrigerator and he said  that's the first thing that's going to go some of our christmas parties we've had or are probably the most on we've had a motorway from in the in the old station where we'd pull trucks outside and we had to have a christmas party in the get together with people in the base of the fire station and then there for a while we went out to a restaurant then have that party but we never really enjoyed it as much in the restaurants as we do in our own building it was the one ninety year that we weren't on call we would have lake johannah and little canada fire department answering all fire calls so all we could get is wrong because we wanted to and we didn't have to worry about somebody's house burning to the ground so we let all hang out that was a one night a year that we weren't a fireman got to go to conventions one senior and it was sort of like a reward for all the hard times and everything you put up with falling year and it was sort of in that was just crazy and in the beginning we camped out going to a hotel probably the biggest fire activity that we do every year is that that's a very standing community tradition and that was probably one of the activities that  founding members of the fire department in eighty five were going to be retiring in six years so they went to the city council and said look you know we could have twenty guys retire and so we can't take that hit so we have to add additional firefighters on so that when the twenty year veterans retire we at least have six year or five year or four year firefighters in their place so they had the city allowed us to expand up to forty and so we've been using that number now what really made me get involved first set of turnout gear this was back when you had the hip waiter boots and i had holes in mine in the instructors in my firefighter one class for real concern that you know wasn't osha approved  come up high and far more protective quality than than the old boots used to be and then you had the long heavy coats i was on during that period of time too and now we have the lighter jackets that come waist high and then the pants come up higher to protect that so it's a fine are safer we've gone to the next woods which again protects every square inch of them one of the real big things is the air at the n s a air packs that the steel ta face piece so you still get a good snug fit otherwise it was one size fits all so either your helmet was really too tight or it was really too loose and it never fit properly so just little things that are really improved a lot the training  changed since i started mainly as a result of the larger facilities that we've had in this fire station and i can remember when we first got i think we had a force of maybe thirty to thirty two people and we all squeezed into a very small meeting room at the north station and then it got pretty hot and crowded there and and we didn't have all of the new trucks that we have right now so we had  we had more people taking turns on the pumpers and some of the other equipment and now that we've got a new station and some new fire regs the training gets to be a lot more hands on for everyone we have more equipment to use the equipment has a lot nicer than it used to be in the trailer courts we had a call it was a work in trailer for and the trailer takes about all of three minutes to be liveable to trust instantly and leave the call come in that there were  children inside and three of us had to make a rapid entry and that was true it was really really wrong and it flames out to three sides but i believe t one thing that sticks out as a remember grabbing a teddy bear to kneel on because the floor was so hot and shortly after that my sticker ran off my helmet dribbled off my helmet and that's all warm it was inside there were children  the one that was most memorable and maybe most rewarding in e m s call related to i think the call came over and i see child choking on a cracker and when we arrived at the scene we found a young child probably twelve months in respiratory distress and then as things unfolded we determined very early on that it was it was a very severe medical difficulty we decided to do was a situation where the child had to be rushed immediately to the hospital so as soon as the advanced life support ambulance arrived we loaded the infant into the ambulance and the company of the  ambulance to the hospital supporting it very aggressively on the way down when we arrived the child went mediately into a surgical operating room where when x rayed they found that there was  a beam caught actually you know its upper respiratory area and having not had the opportunity to really receive very rapid aggressive treatment the outcome could have  been very very poor but as it turned out the child did very well and was taken care of very quickly so it was he was very rewarding to have had an opportunity to be involved and i think the most memorable scene that i've been on as a fireman is a car accident that we had a couple winters ago i'm thirty and it was a minivan that rolled over and it was hit by another car traveling in the same way the freeway and it took as i recall about forty five minutes to get the vehicle separated and then that means i have taken another fifteen to thirty minutes to get the injured and we had some people that were extremely affected by this call and we were really happy to find out within a week or so there waiter that he was doing ok in my position i worry worry about the forty people that belong to the department that any decisions that we make and the fire ground is that decision that we make  somebody is life in some way and of course you always put a safe aside you can life is very valuable and knock on wood we've never had any problem or we've years they worked really hard they planted the seed with the city council they live with them every year to set aside money to get this thing done and they manage to get through it sure is a nice community relations temporary where the community can get involved see the station see the trucks and definitely kids and when i was a kid i like to look at the fire trucks and climb on home and it gives the community a sense of involvement that the fire department one cares about individuals in the community and also with a community just to learn of some good experiences they for example the children in the small cost of what exactly needs to be done you know where situations within their os which they may or may not be getting training on that at their house so it's beneficial for both sides i think there's a lot of benefits to have women on the department expression when we get into the medical end of it when we're running ambulances and we're going to call it involves a female would feel more comfortable that both parties would feel more comfortable with it i think that's one big advantage for any part of it was interesting my daughter was down was talking to the former firefighter who came home and think you know i'd really like to do that  young adults that yes they can do it it's really really rewarding and gratifying to know that you've accomplished something over the years and you look at you look at the old fire truck that we have which was my first paper which we still have to set down alongside one of the new ones and  know i never thought we'd ever get one of these we've got it i think i have it was probably just just a challenge for the excitement of the fire i was farming pretty exciting right i know our friendships have gotten stronger our friendships are the fire department retired as well as active going to endure all that there are best bunch of friends i've ever had in my life