Clarksville VFD back in business
CLARKSVILLE – The Clarksville Volunteer Fire Department again is up and running after five months without workers’ compensation insurance for fire and ambulance personnel. The borough’s policy with Selective Insurance Co., which covered the fire department and ambulance crews, had expired in June.
Clarksville Mayor Sam Benyi, who serves as assistant fire chief of the department, said earlier that the lapse in coverage was an oversight resulting from a turnover in secretarial staff in the borough office.
The fire department’s ambulance service paid the premium after the fire company voted to do so Nov. 18. On Tuesday, the department received confirmation of the coverage.
He said the current insurance policy, through Bailey Insurance in Waynesburg, is the same carried by the Waynesburg Volunteer Fire Department and other volunteer fire companies throughout Greene County.
During the time without coverage, several fire department members were eager to continue their work, so they signed a waiver stating the borough was not responsible if they were injured on the job. Volunteers did not take advantage of the waiver, though. The Greene County solicitor approached Benyi soon afterward.
“I was told by the solicitor that it would be illegal to have anyone answering fire calls without workman’s compensation,” said Benyi.
That was when Benyi decided he must work quickly so he and the other members could return to action.
From Tuesday, Nov. 18, to Tuesday, Nov. 25, the fire department’s services were suspended. During that weeklong period, there were no fires, but there were floods.
Benyi said that when the waters rose around Greene County on Nov. 19, fire and ambulance volunteers yearned to help but were forced to stand aside. Residents whose basements were flooded phoned the homes of the Clarksville firefighters, asking for their assistance.
“It was hard to handle the people that called during the flood,” said Benyi. “They had to be turned down. They were told to call the Greene County 911, and that’s when Jefferson and Rices Landing fire companies pitched in.”
Although the flooding forced the Greene County commissioners to declare a disaster emergency as the waters of Ten Mile Creek overflowed their banks, Jeff Marshall, emergency services director for Greene County, said he fielded calls from Clarksville without any trouble. Calls from the Clarksville area were dispatched to Rices Landing and Jefferson fire companies and EMS Southwest Ambulance Service while Clarksville’s firefighters were out of commission.
Although it was a trying time without the fire department, which operates an ambulance and two fire trucks, firefighters and ambulance personnel are back on duty and have already faced their first challenge, said Benyi.
On Thanksgiving Day, several volunteers literally were forced “to drop their forks” during their meals to respond to a car accident in the borough, Benyi said.
“I already ate, but my son and his girlfriend were just sitting down to eat, and we had to leave,” added Benyi.
However, that type of work is what the Clarksville volunteers are eager to handle.
“If you are with a volunteer organization, whether Clarksville or another, whether you are walking on the street, you are still a volunteer, and you carry that with you 24 hours a day,” Benyi said. “It is definitely a certain breed of person that becomes involved. Not everybody would get up at 3 in the morning when it is 10 degrees outside, freezing or snowing, to respond to a call.”
Benyi said it makes him feel good that “the fire department is back as an important part of the borough again.
“I guarantee that this will never happen again,” he said, referring to the insurance lapse that led to the shutdown in the first place.