Man passes on fire skills

By ADAM M. FABIAN Eagle Staff Writer

March 22, 2005 Last Updated: March 23, 2005 03:54 PM Special Sections

Education is key to safety

UNIONVILLE - With an outline spread out on pages of yellow paper on the table in front of him, Bill Voegler is ready to teach.

The pages mark significant moments in county fire fighting history. From the evolution of trucks and equipment to the introduction of 911 for emergency telephone calls, Voegler knows and experienced most of it.

The 63-year-old Unionville firefighter has battled blazes since 1958, when he joined the Mars Volunteer Fire Department.

Now, he's an executive director at the Unionville Volunteer Fire Department, where he's been a member since 1969. He also is a fire instructor at the Public Safety Fire Training Facility at Butler County Community College.

Although he now spends much of his time teaching - he even requested a room in the Unionville department's new fire hall be used exclusively for teaching fire safety - he's performed just about every task. From serving on the Unionville dive team to driving a fire truck, Voegler said he still occasionally enters burning buildings.

But while Voegler's presence as a firefighter has remained constant for 47 years, fire fighting has not.

While a member of the Mars department, Voegler and the other firefighters were responsible for covering Cranberry Township.

In 1958, Voegler said Cranberry wasn't much more than a crossroad with a couple of buildings, an oil well and the Thorn Hill Detention Center.

The census in 1950 counted 1,054 people in Cranberry. By 1960 there were 3,596 there. In 2000, the census counted 23,625 in the township.

So while the population was smaller in 1958, the fire fighting equipment was less effective than it is now.

Voegler recalls first riding on a fire truck in 1951. The Mars truck, which was a 1935 Ford with an open cab, had a 500-gallon per minute rotary gear pump.

Now, there are fire trucks capable of pumping up to 23,000 gallons per minute.

But if it hadn't been for that ride in 1951, Voegler may have never donned a fire suit.

"That's what bit me into service," he said.

Other equipment, such as the air masks, also have evolved.

When he first started, departments used a filter mask. But the mask, which filtered the air, didn't do much more.

"It was basically a glorified hanky," Voegler said.

Then masks improved to the Chemox mask and rebreather, which allows firefighters to breathe their own air after it is enhanced by a chemically made oxygen.

The masks, which are made by MSA in Cranberry, are still used today, he said. But he said many fire departments use compressed air in a bottle, commonly known as an oxygen tank, although it is air - not oxygen - that the firefighters breath.

Even the kind of liquid used to extinguish a fire has changed.Instead of just water, Voegler said some departments now use compressed air foam, which smothers the fire.Even the equipment used to communicate has changed.When he first started, Voegler said departments didn't even have radios. Instead, a siren tripped by telephone operators alerted firefighters of a blaze."There were no pagers, no nothing," he said.In fact, Voegler said it wasn't until the 1950s that departments first started using mobile radios and base stations.In 1969, Clint Greenwault introduced county emergency services to the 911 system, Voegler said."(Greenwault) did a lot of work for it," he said, recalling Greenwault's presentations to fire departments explaining the 911 system.Now the radios are changing again as the county prepares to switch to the upgraded countywide emergency radio system.Such changes are an average part of Voegler's lengthy career, but some of the changes have been less positive.Voegler said he remembers when the fire hall was the center of the community. Every time the fire whistle blew, he said, children would run to the hall, causing the firefighters to shoo the youngsters away.Even his first ride on a fire truck wasn't unusual, Voegler said, because children sometimes did that.But now, because of insurance purposes, children can't ride on fire trucks. In fact, just about everything about fire fighting has changed, he said.Fire halls are no longer the center of the community. There are other places where people hold wedding receptions and parties."It's a reflection of the times," he said.One of the reasons for such changes, he said, is the lack of time firefighters have for that service.When they're not extinguishing a blaze, Voegler said, firefighters should be busy preparing. That preparation, after 30 years of teaching, is now the focus of his career."If you're not fighting a fire, you should be learning how to do it safely," he said.

As an instructor at the fire training facility, Voegler teaches courses on hazardous materials, flammable gasses and flammable liquids.After watching fire fighting and its equipment evolve, Voegler thinks about the future of this service because, as the equipment has improved, the number of deaths each year has remained about constant, he said.This, he said, must change."No person in the fire service deserves to get hurt, or worse, killed," he said.What he calls "macho fire fighting" - the act of going into an already destroyed burning building - also must end, Voegler said.But mostly, the key to safe fire fighting is education."It demands a lot of education and a lot of time," he said.Time that takes the firefighters away from their wives, family and friends.For that, he gives a special thanks to those people whose loved ones, through education, he tries to keep safe, even as fire fighting continues to change.