By Danny Teigman
Ready to serve at a moment's notice, these dedicated men and women live in a world of extremes - both hungering for and fearing the next "signal 10" - or fire in progress.
Like the majority of its counterparts throughout Nassau County, the 147-member, East Rockaway Fire Department is an all-volunteer organization. It consists of four fire houses, two ambulances, three engines - or pumpers, one hook and ladder truck and a heavy rescue/floodlight unit. They serve the Village of East Rockaway, and Town of Hempstead areas, Bay Park, and Angle Sea. Within those areas, the Nassau County Sewer Plant, the Bay Park golf course, and the Bay Park boating facility are also protected. As if having personalities themselves, each of the four buildings have names - Liberty Hose, Grant Avenue, Head Quarters and Main Street. Housed within Main Street are the Vigilant Engine Company and Protector Hook and Ladder.
Reason's for joining range from a desire to give back to the community, to following in the footsteps of family members, or simply, to satisfy an adventurous spirit and enjoy the camaraderie the group provides.
"By the time I was 15 or 16, I knew I was going to join," said John Skoblicki, a two-year veteran of the department and fiercely loyal to his particular company.
Skoblicki, 20, was strongly encouraged by his parents to learn about fire, he said, after accidentally setting his house ablaze while trying to ignite a 9-volt battery.
"I heard my sister screaming fire, fire, fire," he said, after he thought he had extinguished any remaining embers in his bathtub.
Calling himself and many of his friends, "adventure junkies," Skoblicki became a member of the department's Junior Firefighter program, where at age, 12, he accompanied firefighters on their calls.
Kerry Miskovits, one of only eight women in the department, joined three years ago for far different reasons.
Miskovits found her fiance, Dennis, collapsed on the floor in a semi-conscious state. Thanks to the East Rockaway rescue unit's rapid response time, he was rushed to South Nassau Communities Hospital, where it was determined he had diabetes and was in diabetic shock. Grateful for their voluntary assistance, Miskovits became an EMT.
"When something like that happens - you have to give back," Miskovits said. "I owe everything to these guys. If the first responders don't come - they're the ones who initiate care." Always tethered to the fire houses by radio, crackling voices intermittently fill the air with a seemingly unintelligible slew of code names and numbers.
After completing ice-rescue drills on the tundra-looking Bay Park grass two weeks ago, Lt. Jack Felbinger and the department's mood changed once again. Competitive humor had shifted to alert-ready preparedness - to an emergency call from Fire Comm - the dispatcher, that a woman on Mallow Road, was having chest pains. Firefighters' Sunday afternoon plans were again, put on hold. Within three minutes, emergency vehicles had arrived. Thankfully, Felbinger said, the woman, who could not be identified, did not require additional assistance. A "signal 13" - or "all clear" brings a sigh of relief. Tension relaxes and a mild easiness returns.
When asked how such extremes, like always being on-call or having to get up in the middle of the night, affect his family, Felbinger admitted, "that it's something that definitely wears on them." "At first you're lying awake waiting for it," he said. But overtime, you become accustomed to it."
Although they don't receive any income for their efforts, Lt. Scott Ripp added that a sense of community pride is the essence of joining. "If it were paid, I think it would change the whole thing, he said as he watched the ice rescue in progress on a wind-wiped, frozen morning. "This is an, 'I wanna do it,' instead of 'I have to do it.'"
Comments about this story? DTeigman@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 246.
