Following Tyrone Borough Council\u2019s vote to suspend operations of the Citizens Fire Company after 122 years, Tyrone Borough Fire Chief Jim Beckwith assures residents that fire protection in the borough is under control.
\n\u201cI want to assure residents that fire protection will not suffer following the closing of the Citizens Fire Company,\u201d said Beckwith.
\nThe remaining members of the Citizens held a meeting on Tuesday night and voted 10-1 to dissolve the company.
\n\u201cThey are good fire fighters at the Citizens,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cThey just got in a bind in which they couldn\u2019t see the end of the tunnel.\u201d
\nThe brush equipment that is stationed at the Citizens is owned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and according to Beckwith, the state will decide where to locate that equipment.
\nAs Borough Fire Chief, Beckwith must maintain an active membership at one of Tyrone\u2019s fire companies and had maintained membership at the Citizens. Beckwith recently transferred his active membership to the Hookies in which he had been a social member for years.
\n\u201cThe Hookies and Neptunes are taking applications and having meetings to accept the former Citizens members into the remaining two companies,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cThe Hookies had a meeting on Tuesday night and the Neptunes are having a meeting tonight to accept former Citizens members.\u201d
\nWith the shift of rescue operations, Hookies Chief Bob Lynn sees no change for residents.
\n\u201cWe have had a full rescue unit for years,\u201d said Lynn. \u201cWe have run as a backup and this will have no effect on the rescue operations in the borough.\u201d
\nMost of the equipment at the Citizens Fire Company is owned by the Firefighters Relief Association and was purchased with state funds and is audited. That includes the burnout gear, rescue tools and general firefighting equipment.
\n\u201cWe will look at the equipment the Citizens has and see what isn\u2019t a duplication of what we have at the Hookies,\u201d said Lynn.
\n\u201cWith the extra responsibility and additional equipment, space will be kind of tight for a while until we get things organized.\u201d
\nLynn is also a former chief at the Citizens Fire Company.
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to see it close,\u201d said Lynn. \u201cA lot of people who I served with have a lot of good memories of our time there.\u201d
\nFor Beckwith, the job of closing the company was his to do as the borough fire chief.
\n\u201cIt was very painful for me personally to do what I was forced to do,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cMy father was a member of the Citizens, I was a member since 1961 when I graduated high school and my son was a member there. That is three generations of Beckwith\u2019s who served with the Citizens.
\n\u201cI was one of the original seven members who started the rescue operations,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cI built my firefighting career there. It was very hard to do what needed to be done. When the chief (Dave Lynch) and assistant chief (Mike Beckwith) resigned, I determined that you can\u2019t run an organization in which lives are at risk without leadership.\u201d
\nThere is a possibility that the fire department in Tyrone will become stronger with the closing of the Citizens.
\n\u201cWe have good firefighters who were at the Citizens and will help strengthen the other two companies,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cWe still have fire companies to make sure we are covered on both sides of the tracks and we have commitments from Bald Eagle, Tipton and Bellwood to provide backup for us.
\n\u201cThere are a lot of good firefighters in this town,\u201d said Beckwith. \u201cThey don\u2019t need to be trained at their new companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following Tyrone Borough Council\u2019s vote to suspend operations of the Citizens Fire Company after 122 years, Tyrone Borough Fire Chief Jim Beckwith assures residents that fire protection in the borough is under control. \u201cI want to assure residents that fire protection will not suffer following the closing of the Citizens Fire Company,\u201d said Beckwith. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}