It was always an unwritten rule that a firefighter would do anything to help his fellow brethren in a time of dire need.
"We’ve always helped each other," said North Hudson Regional Fire & Rescue Chief Brion McEldowney last week. "No fire department is geared to handle all emergencies. Sometimes, you have to rely on your neighbors to help you."
However, there are incidents where a firefighter might get injured fighting a blaze outside of his jurisdiction. Or times when a piece of fire equipment gets damaged helping to fight a fire in another municipality.
"We needed to have something in place, something in writing, that would cover us in those times," McEldowney said.
Last Tuesday, the fire chiefs from all of Hudson County’s municipalities got together with Hudson County Executive Thomas DeGise to sign the first Mutual Aid Agreement, which covers all of the local fire departments in case of emergencies when combined help is necessary.
Now, there is a formal plan as to which departments help out the others in terms of coverage and backups in case of emergencies.
"It made a lot of sense to do it the right way and put it in writing," McEldowney said. "The Mutual Aid Agreement now details how things should be handled in the case of an emergency. It was something we needed to do."
It was also important to put the Mutual Aid Agreement into law, because the Federal Department of Homeland Security has requested municipalities in close general proximity to offer aid to each other in times of crisis.
"These are the kinds of things that were taken care of informally, just in the spirit of cooperation," DeGise said. "But nothing was ever formalized. Our office of emergency management, headed by Frank Pizzuta, tried to figure out if we could reach an agreement like this, on behalf of the safety of everyone in Hudson County. Now, we have something formal."
Added DeGise, "Especially after 9/11, we’ve realized that there are many times where there is a need to combine services. I think all the mayors agreed that we should get together and do what’s necessary."
Which means that all political differences were put aside – for the time being – for the good of the general public.
"I was laughing with the fire chiefs, because it’s not all the time that you get everyone to agree on something," DeGise said.
Chiefs meet monthly
McEldowney said that the county’s fire chiefs meet monthly, so there were never any political differences that got in the way of reaching the agreement.
"I can’t speak for the individual towns, but I can speak for the fire chiefs, in that we all get along pretty well," McEldowney said. "It’s not surprising for the fire chiefs to get together and agree on something. We’ve been discussing mutual aid for quite some time now, in terms of coverage and training issues. Now, we have that agreement officially in place."
DeGise said that are some other issues that needed to be addressed in the agreement, because municipalities like Secaucus still operate a volunteer fire department, instead of a paid department.
"It can get tough when you have volunteers interacting with professionals," DeGise said. "There could be certain problems. But the Secaucus volunteer firefighters do a great job and understand their roles."
DeGise said that he will encourage the county’s municipalities to do more combined emergency services in the future. There will also be a new Hudson County Office of Emergency Management facility being built in Secaucus.
"We’d like to do more with uniform services and public safety personnel," DeGise said. "So we can all respond to catastrophic events better. The OEM office will also continue to train civilians that would be able to help."
Right now, the North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue squad serves North Bergen, Union City, West New York, Guttenberg and Weehawken. The other towns are served by their own departments.