Company comes to rescuers’ rescue

Providence Fire Chief Dave Atwell stands with the department’s new van in front of the firehouse Tuesday.

The call for a water rescue at Galway Lake in late October came at the wrong time of year for the Providence Fire Department.

The fire truck that carries cold-water rescue equipment from late fall to spring still carried its summer brush-fire fighting equipment instead. Switching equipment slowed firefighters’ response.

It wouldn’t have made a difference in this case — the victim, a Navy sailor who had gone swimming alone, had already drowned when friends reported him missing — but a firefighter still called the situation “our worst nightmare.”

It won’t happen again to the Providence department, whose personnel are the cold-water rescue specialists for northwestern Saratoga County. The volunteer department has added a van that will be used exclusively for ice and cold-water rescues in and around the rural corner of the county.

“Because of the condition of the equipment being stuffed into places, we had to do something,” said John Borowski, a fire lieutenant who is also one of the Providence fire district’s elected commissioners.

The town, with a population of 2,000 spread across 46 square miles of Adirondack foothills, borders the popular Great Sacandaga Lake and is dotted with other small lakes, reservoirs and beaver ponds. As ice starts to form in early winter, people venture out onto bodies of water — and sometimes they go out too early in the season and break through.

“We had one [incident] in 2011. Some years you don’t have any, but you have to be ready. You get people out on these lakes all the time,” said Providence Fire Chief David Atwell.

The van, a 2002 Dodge Ram, was donated to the department by Time-Warner Cable, which had used it as a service vehicle.

Members of the fire company raised about $3,000 through private efforts to convert the van, which went into service at the Hagadorn Mills station a few weeks ago.

“The vehicle did not cost taxpayers any funds,” Atwell said.

The van carries a night-search spotlight and other scene lighting, as well as water-rescue suits for firefighters, an inflatable 22-foot rescue boat and other specialized equipment.

“Up here, the reality is 10 months of the year, we need that stuff,” he said. “Below 70 degrees, it’s cold water.”

Water below that temperature puts people at risk of hypothermia, when their body temperatures drops too low for them to function normally. Victims become unresponsive or panicky.

The van is equipped for providing first aid, but rescued people are immediately turned over to emergency medical services personnel as soon as possible, Atwell said.

Borowski said the van will respond to all the department’s fire calls, giving firefighters a place to warm up in winter or cool off in summer, if it is not needed for its rescue function. Unlike some larger departments, Providence does not have a specialized rescue truck.

“This is our closest thing to a multipurpose vehicle,” Borowski said.

The department, which averages about 70 calls of all types per year, has 26 volunteers. It operates five pieces of fire apparatus, including the van, with stations in Hagadorn Mills and just north of Barkersville.