Harrisville Volunteer Fire Department, Inc.
Established November 1918
Incorporated in 1977
New Fire Station Built in 1990
Harrisville
Volunteer Fire Department, Inc. is a totally volunteer department with 28
dedicated, highly trained members, male and female. We work out of (1) Fire
Station located in Harrisville, New York in the very northern part of Lewis
County. Our service area covers approximately 200 square miles: Town of Diana,
in Lewis County - 140.8 square mile, Town of Pitcairn, in St Lawrence County -
59.5 square miles, The Village of Harrisville and part of Northern Herkimer
County.
There
are approximately 1206 residential structures located within our district, 41%
of which were built before 1939. The department serves a generally rural population
in an economically depressed area. Our service area includes Lake Bonaparte, an
inland lake with 21 miles of shoreline, a school with 450 students and faculty,
two Medical Centers, a Senior Citizens Apartment Complex and a snowplow manufacturing plant (Viking-Cives)
.
Our
service area also borders the Fort Drum Army Installation to our West with
107,000 acres of training and impact areas, and the Adirondack Park to our
East. There are a handful of commercial properties in our district, but no
large scale manufacturing or production companies. Approximately 30% of the
response area is made up of rural farm land and residential properties with the
rest being heavily forested areas. We protect approximately 2,500 citizens.
We
have a 765KV power line running through our area as well as a large scale
underground gas line by Iroquois Gas Company that presently transmits 1.2
billion cu ft/day at a pressure of 1,440 psi. The Harrisville Hydro Electric
Dam produces 1.8 mega watts of electricity daily. Our area also includes two
major two lane highways, State Route 3 and State Route 812. Both of these
highways are heavily used by tractor-trailers, log trucks, school buses and
passenger cars. These roads are major access routes East to the Adirondack
Mountains and North to Canada.
We
are dispatched by (2) Counties via pagers and text messaging by: Lewis County
Dispatch located in Lowville, New York and St Lawrence County Dispatch (Central
Dispatch) located in Canton, New York. We communicate on two radio bands, high
band and low band due to our service area in two different counties. The
Harrisville Rescue Squad is a separate entity from the Fire Department but they
keep the ambulance at our Fire Station. Members of the Fire Department are also
members of the Harrisville Rescue Squad and vice versa.
Our
apparatus includes: a 1998, E-One Pumper, a 2010 Four Guys Midi-Pumper, a 1996
GMC Tanker, a 2005 Danko, International Tanker, a 1993 International Van (used
for equipment), a 1998 Ford F-150 (used for water rescue and forest fighting
supplies) and a 1975 22’ Starcraft Center console Rescue Boat. Some of the
things we do: firefighting, interior and exterior, search and rescue, traffic
control, cold & warm water rescue, courtesy home safety checks, wild land
forest fire fighting, fire prevention, vehicle extrications, hazardous
materials response, controlled burns and constantly train.
