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DEPARTMENT HISTORY JANUARY 10, 2001 95th Anniversary

During the late 1800's as the Snake River Valley began to attract scattered residents, the need for help to extinguish out of control fires became evident. A notice in the "Idaho News" newspaper in 1887, requested that anybody that noticed smoke or fire that might be emanating from any uncontrolled fires, to send an able bodied person to assist in extinguishment and prevent the spread to adjoining property. Here in the village of Blackfoot, on January 1, 1906 the call of "FIRE" went out at almost midnight. Several of the wooden buildings on the West Side of Main Street were on fire. Concern that this fire might spread to adjacent buildings prompted a request from the Blackfoot mayor to the Pocatello Mayor for assistance. The Pocatello Fire Department loaded some equipment on a railroad car and was on standby if the fire started to spread. The local citizens must have been able to control the fire because the Equipment from Pocatello was never moved to Blackfoot. On January 10, 1906 some of the concerned citizens petitioned the Board of Trustees to establish a Fire Department.

Volly VanBramer was appointed Fire chief and was authorized to organize a fire department. Approximately 20 volunteers were selected to help protect the homes, business buildings, stables and barns within the nearly one square mile village limits.

The first fire equipment was a hose cart and approximately 600 feet of hose.

The Blackfoot Water Works system that supplied water around town was privately owned by Mr. E.O. Johnson. At the April 11, 1906 Board of Trustees meeting a bill of $90.00 was presented for payment for water hydrants used by the Street Sprinklers and for being available as a water source for fighting fires. I don't know how many hydrants were available at that time.

On June 2nd, 1914 it was authorized by the City council to have the 2 inch water main on Shilling Avenue upgraded to a 4 inch one so that hydrants connected to this main will be of service to the city. A bill of $400.00 for a new Studebaker Sprinkler Wagon was approved and paid at this same meeting. And in October 1916 it was reported that there were 30 fire hydrants in good shape.

At the September 12, 1906 Board meeting, a bid of $ 696.75 was accepted to construct a building to put the fire equipment in. (A recent bid of over $800.00 was submitted just to replace the front door at Station # 1) It was located near where the Bingham County Historical Society Rail Road Caboose sits now at the corner of West Bridge and North West Main.

The Fire Department was moved from Main and Bridge over to Taylor Street when the new City Hall was built there. It was torn down and paved over in 1988 to become the parking lot for the relocated City Building.

Blackfoot missed the horse drawn Steamer Fire Engines. We went from hand pulled hose carts and a hook and ladder wagon directly to a truck mounted fire engine. In the council meeting of November 6, 1917 it was moved and seconded that the city sign a contract to purchase an American La France Combination Chemical and Hose Motor Car type 40. It was a 4 cylinder 75 horsepower truck equipped with a Junior Pump. In July of 1918 authorization of a payment on fire truck of $ 1850.00 was made.

The fire truck would be housed next to city hall on Taylor Street. (It was renamed North Broadway on April 2, 1918). When the new fire truck was delivered it didn't fit in the station until the floor of the building was lowered by several inches.

In a report made by the Blackfoot Water Works dated February 25, 1918 the estimated population of Blackfoot was nearly 4000 people. The streets are 66 feet wide running in North-North Westerly and South-South Easterly directions. Avenues run at right angles to the streets and are 100 feet wide. Blocks are 250 feet by 270 feet with an alley through the middle of the block. There are about 1-½ miles of pavement in the business section of the city. (NOTE: Today's Shilling Avenue is over 1-1/2 miles long.) The Fire Department has a total of nine men. Fire Chief is paid $100.00 per month full time and eight volunteers receive $10.00 each per month.

The fire station is located in the main part of the city, in the same building with the city offices and the public library. The building is of brick construction. The station is equipped with two hand hose carts, 1100 feet of 2-1/2 inch hose, one hand cart with chemical tank, one hand hook and ladder wagon.

On April 15, 1919 one of the hand hose carts was sold to the Village of Aberdeen for $50.00.

In February 1918 the volunteers were; Frank Lindsay, Bert Larson, Earnest Nugent, J.M. Boyle, V.L. Phillips, Don Geyer, Max Smith and Ed Boyle, along with fire chief J. Boice.

Fred Simons was appointed Fire Chief in April of 1919.

I apologize for the drastic gap in the information here but forgive me; I will get back over to City Hall and fill in the gaps.

In April 1939 the Fire Department roll call was as follows; James Boyle Fire Chief, Vesper Babcock Assistant Chief, with the rest being, Homer Hopkins, Glenn Pratt, Ashton Roberts, Godfrey Bernat, I.P. Bills, Fred Vogt, Kenneth Taylor and Jack Ness.

When the bids were opened at the June 6,1939 Council meeting, for a new fire engine, there were no less than 22 different combinations of fire apparatus, mounted on several different trucks. On June 9 it was decided to accept the bid to purchase an American-LaFrance Foamite Industries Inc. fire apparatus mounted on a 1939 Ford with a 95 horsepower, Mercury V8 engine at a cost of $3666.11.

A shiny "Red Fire truck ", another American LaFrance, was added in 1950 to replace the aged and out of service 1918 model. Since the area surrounding Blackfoot was becoming more populated, the need for additional fire equipment also increased. To fill this need, the Snake River Mutual Insurance Company provided fire trucks for use in the rural areas. Local businessmen and merchants operated these Fire Engines whenever the call of "FIRE" rang out.

In 1960, to help keep fire insurance premiums down, a full time Fire Chief, J.T. Schwarz and three full time firemen were hired to man the station 24 hours a day. They continued to maintain the equipment and fight fires with supplemental volunteers. In 1965 another American LaFrance fire engine was added to the city fire department. However this created a problem since there was only room at the station next to city hall for a couple of trucks.

A new Fire Station and Police Department building was built at the present location at the corner of Idaho and Ash streets in 1967.

In 1975 another American LaFrance Pumper was purchased and added to the aging fire engines still in use. The full time staff was increased to 9 men plus the Chief. In 1976, the year of the Teton Flood and the USA Bicentennial, July brought a big change for the Fire Department. The local Ambulance service was turned over to Bingham County and the Fire Department was requested to house it and provide the manpower. The staff was increased to 12 plus the Chief and a part time secretary. Several new volunteers were also added. The paid personnel and some of the volunteers became Emergency Medical Technicians.

Fire Chief J.T. Schwarz retired and Parley Wynn was appointed as Chief. Paid staff was increased to 15 cross-trained men, able to respond to fires or ambulance calls. In 1977 the first full year of ambulance service, there were 527 ambulance calls | and fire calls were up by over 100 from the 211 call average during the previous 8 years.

When Bingham County was divided into 3 Fire Districts in 1978, a fire station was built in Rockford. This was to provide for quicker response times to emergency calls in the nearly 1500 square miles encompassed by the Blackfoot and Snake River School district boundaries. A Pumper truck, a tanker truck and an ambulance were housed there. Staffing was from the station in town. A dedicated group of Rockford area volunteers was soon added. 1978 also saw the retirement of our old Engine #1. The "39 was sold to the Pocatello Shriner's to use in local area parades.

Hazardous materials have been with the fire service since the days of the caveman, but 1980 brought it to the front for the Blackfoot Fire Department. A chemical warehouse at Russet Chemical in Fort Hall was totally destroyed by fire for a loss of $250,000.00 plus another $100,000.00 in cleanup costs. This was the largest Haz-Mat fire in the U.S.A. at that time. A total of 38 separate agencies were involved in suppression and cleanup.

A full time Fire Marshal was added to the staffing in 1990. Over 150 business locations were inspected and filed by the Fire Marshal in 1992 but by years end in 1993 that number had more than doubled to approximately 400 locations.

Ambulance calls have continued to be the majority of the runs since 1976. Continuing training for the Ambulance personnel brought the staff up to 15 Advanced and 9 Basic EMT's and plans for additional Volunteers to have EMT training is in the works. This soon became a total of 37 EMT's.

Blackfoot has been able to maintain the Idaho Fire Rating Bureau #4 rating in city and an #8 rating in the Fire District since 1976.

Fire Chief Parley Wynn retired June 1,1995 after 26 years service with the Blackfoot Fire Department. Kevin Gray was appointed as Chief.

In addition to all of the usual fire fighting skills and problems, some of the staff have branched out to add special training for rescues that only a few years ago would have been handled in a not quite so professional a manner. High angle rescues and confined space rescue as well as ongoing Haz-Mat training are examples. These responses are scattered out from edge to edge and top to bottom of the nearly 1,500 square miles of one of the largest Fire Districts in the state of Idaho.

During the past 25 years the staff at the Blackfoot Fire Department has been able to save the City and Fire District Thousands of dollars by remodeling or building much of the equipment that we use. The past couple of months during 1999 have been used to remodel and refurbish two Brush rigs obtained from the Bureau of Land Management surplus equipment.

A new 75-foot Ladder Truck joined the Fire Equipment here at Blackfoot during the summer of 2000. This truck should help control a fire if there is one in the ever-increasing number of larger buildings in our response area. And to provide adequate manpower for the ever-increasing number of calls, we now have three, seven man crews. Each shift has a Captain, a Sergeant, and five Fire Fighter/EMT's. The Fire Chief and a City Fire Marshal plus a full time secretary. There are still several dependable paid/volunteer's that respond to assist as needed.

I have tried to provide some history along with the information needed to show that the Fire Department, both City and District, have had an increased number of emergency runs each year. We have increased from Approximately 1 fire call every other day in 1968, to 2 .3 calls per day during 1977, the first full year of the combined ambulance and fire service. In 1988 the run average rose to just under 3 calls per day. As 1998 came to a close with a record number of calls the average has moved up to almost 5 1/2 runs per day. The number of business Inspection files has grown to nearly 600 locations. The city limits are straining at the seams. It is very probable that before the next century begins, the city limits will be expanded again. The city has been asked to annex a proposed sub-division on the West Side of the Snake River. Just in the past two years there have been three subdivisions added to our little city. With all of the projected growth, the Fire Department will need to expand to keep up with it.

As the Millennium year closes or opens as the case may be, a record total number of 1,745 combined Ambulance/Fire calls were logged.

Respectfully submitted by Fire Marshal Dell M. Mangum; January 10, 2001, the 95th anniversary of the Blackfoot Fire Department. - Dell M. Mangum Fire Marshal Retired

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