Thursday, October 1, 2026
The Atlantic Steamer Fire Company has welcomed four new members, including three seniors from Oyster Bay High School who say they were drawn by a mix of childhood inspiration, community ties and a desire to help others. The group has spent recent months training together, learning to handle heavy rescue tools, break through vehicle doors and remove roofs during simulated car crash scenarios.
Their training took place behind the firehouse, on East Main Street, where, in their most recent session on Nov. 13, 2nd Assistant Chief Frank Ozol led the “probies” through a hands-on tutorial focused on extracting passengers from a damaged vehicle. Using a vehicle donated by Sagamore Collision, the new members practiced cutting through metal and removing doors under the guidance of veteran firefighters.
“I wanted them to get the feel of a couple of saws that we use,” Ozol said. “It’s very intimidating to take this big saw — it’s like a gigantic saw that you need two hands for, and it’s a bit intimidating when you sink it into the metal and drag it across.”
The goal, he said, was to have the new members make mistakes in a safe teaching environment rather than during an emergency. “Better we find problems during training,” he added, “than when we’re trying to get somebody out of a car.”
OBHS seniors Ethan Fernandez, Dexter Jelley and Christian Vazquez, along with their fellow new member, Christian’s father, Ismail, took turns working with the spreaders and cutters known collectively as the “jaws of life.” They learned how to how to pry open doors and how to avoid hazards such as airbag inflators and gas shocks.
The high schoolers said they have looked forward to joining the department for years. Vazquez said the idea first came up on the lacrosse field with Fernandez, whose father, Pablo, has been a member for over 30 years.
“He told us since seventh grade, ‘join the firehouse when you’re old enough,’” Vazquez recalled. “I had always thought about it since sixth grade, when we were playing lacrosse, and I was like, all right, well, I’ll join, you know, give it a shot. I ended up really liking it.”
Now, Vazquez said he hopes to become a career firefighter after graduation, ideally in the New York City Fire Department.
For his father, joining the fire company fulfills a dream he’s had since he emigrated from El Salvador. He arrived in the United States in 1998, he said, after a childhood marked by hardship and instability.
“I haven’t really had, you know, an easy life,” Ismail Vazquez said. “Sometimes having no food, sometimes having not enough for clothes. So I come into this country, you know, like, finding like opportunity in this country, start working so. And I like … to help people.”
The firehouse, he said, felt welcoming from the start. When his son joined the department, Ismail, said he knew it was finally time to pursue the same path.
The high school students described their first months of training as eye-opening. Jelley said he was surprised by how physically demanding firefighting is, especially during live-fire scenarios at the department’s training facility.
“I was able to go to department ops, where we re-enact real life scenarios at a facility with real buildings that are on fire,” Jelley said. “What shocked me is how straining it is really. You know, just when you’re working the hose, it’s so much like pressure shooting back towards you. You have to push forward, and you come out just sweating like a dog.”
Jelley explained that the three seniors all joined within a few months of one another, starting in March. They said their friendship made the transition easier, complemented by the camaraderie of the firehouse.
“At first I thought it’d be very intimidating being surrounded by all these older guys, and you think they’d be hard on you with this knowledge, but it’s not the case at all,” Jelley said. “Everybody in here is pretty kind and very straightforward and willing to give you the tips that you need.”
They are already working on getting other classmates to join them: Two other O.B.H.S. friends are in the process of joining, and several others are considering it.
Attracting new members is especially critical when volunteer firehouses across the country are seeing drops in membership, as veteran firefighters age out and replacements are harder to find. According to the National Fire Protection Association, the number of volunteer firefighters has dropped by 25 percent since 1984. As of 2020, according to the NFPA, there were only 677,000 volunteers left, the smallest number in the country’s history.
Ozol said he was proud of the young firefighters’ progress and confident that they would continue to grow. He has reminded them that firefighting is always a team effort, especially during exhausting tasks like cutting into a crushed vehicle.
The newest members see that spirit in the company they joined. “At the end of the day,” Ismail Vazquez said, “I’m feeling very happy.”
For more on the Atlantic Steamer Fire Company, visit its website, AtlanticSteamerFire.com.
