LI convoy of used firefighter equipment heads for Kentucky

A convoy of fire trucks and other vehicles laden with firefighters’ tools and protective equipment donated by more than two dozen Long Island fire districts is scheduled to leave Bethpage Thursday for rural Lee County, Kentucky, where it will be distributed to local departments.

The Terry Farrell Firefighters Fund — named for a New York City firefighter and Dix Hills fire chief killed on 9/11 — coordinated the donations, turning its Grumman Road West warehouse into a depot for donations including three lumbering engine pumpers, two vans, 300 sets of turnout gear, 100 helmets, 50 sets of boots and assorted tools, face masks and cases of sanitizer.

It is the largest such effort in the fund's history. "Everybody stepped up," said Brian Farrell, Terry's brother and chairman of the organization.

Some of the gear has passed the 10-year life span called for by National Fire Protection Association guidelines and will be used for training. Some is newer. Some of the trucks date back to the Reagan administration, but all drive and pump.

Over two days and 700 miles, the convoy will travel from a place where property taxes fund multimillion-dollar fire district budgets to one where some volunteer departments scrape by on $11,000 annual allotments from the Kentucky Fire Commission, plus whatever funds their members can string together from grants and pancake breakfasts.

Two-thirds of the nation’s firefighters are volunteers, but many communities strain to bear the cost of equipping them, said Steve Hirsch, chairman of the National Volunteer Fire Council.

A truck might cost $500,000, turnout gear $2,500, breathing apparatus another $10,000. A federal grant program intended to ease the burden of the cost is inadequate and the pandemic has greatly diminished department fundraising, he said.

In that straitened environment, "Long Island is known as a source" of second-hand equipment that gets sold or donated to departments off the East Coast and even overseas, and the work of the Farrell Firefighters Fund is all the more important. They do "mega-good for the fire service," Hirsch said.

"We’re in the red pretty much all the time," said Ben Andrews, the 39-year-old chief of Lee County Volunteer Fire Department. "We are fighting just to sustain ourselves."

The gift of a 1990 FMC pumper from South Hempstead Fire District will let him finally take the department’s flood-damaged 1999 Freightliner offline for maintenance. "There is no way we could have accomplished this without the donation," Andrews said.

A used truck of the type he needs — capable of hauling water across the 209 rugged square miles of his coverage area because much of it is unserved by hydrants — would cost about $40,000, and "even that is a stretch," he said.

Nearly a third of eastern Kentucky Lee County’s 7,395 residents live in poverty, and the median household income of $25,275 is the 23rd lowest in the nation, according to the census.

Significant employers include a call center and privately operated prison.

In February of last year, an ice storm left thousands in the area without power; floods a week later covered downtown Beattyville, the county seat and Andrews’ hometown, under 7 to 10 feet of water.

Andrews, a contractor, said he and his fellow volunteers made about 100 welfare checks, almost half their usual call volume in an entire year.

A police Hummer truck his firefighters used to respond to some emergencies stalled out in the water; that was also when the fire truck was damaged.

He and his fellow firefighters will host a potluck dinner for the Long Islanders when they arrive, he said.

In nearby Owsley County, Chief James Pendergrass of the Vincent Volunteer Fire Department, which serves a small unincorporated community of about 300 homes, said he and his fellow volunteers would put a donated Pierce pumper to work, replacing a 1977 Ford that was rusting out. Pendergrass, 52, Owsley County's director of emergency management, said his department also relied on grants and donations. "You realize how hard we have it at times, but people have what they have and they learn to work with it," he said. "They adapt and overcome obstacles."

Some of the Long Island fire officials participating in the effort — Ron Kestenbaum of North Lindenhurst, Tommy Maher of South Hempstead, Thomas Collins of Eastport, Rick Torre of Smithtown — said in interviews that they were moved by accounts of the tornadoes that ripped through Kentucky last year.

Most said they felt a sense of kinship with firefighters there. "They’re doing the same dangerous work that we do here in Smithtown, but don’t have the equipment or tools to do it," said Torre, a salesman.

The basics of firefighting don't change much by jurisdiction or state, said Maher, a retired New York City sanitation worker who will drive in the convoy, and nor do the reasons people join. "It's about helping others and wanting to keep people safe," he said. "We do whatever we can to help each other out."