Firefighters discover treasures in storage area
It started out as a cleanup project around the Butler fire station. But it evolved into a historic preservation project.
Fire Chief Christopher Switala, who was hired last year, recently ordered firefighters to clean up the cluttered storage area at the North Washington Street facility.
The trove of documents, photographs and artifacts they discovered provide a glimpse into the history of fire service in the city that will be preserved for the future.
Some of the larger pieces, such as a spotlight from an open-cab ladder truck used in the 1950s and 1960s, will be displayed with other department artifacts in the station.
“I wanted to clean up the storage area,” Switala said. “There's an old training prop and an old search light. We've pretty much gone through the equipment. We're going through the documents now. It was up in that storage area for who knows how long.”
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Photographs of firefighters from the Goodwill, Campbell and Spring Street hose companies — three of the city's six original volunteer fire departments that operated in the late 1800s and early 1900s — and a souvenir program from the first Butler Firemen Ball held in 1953 to raise money for the widows' benefit fund were just a few of the rediscovered treasures.
The department became a full-time operation in 1909 and the firemen joined the International Association of Fire Fighters union in 1918.
A record from 1931 shows the fire chief was paid $2,190 that year.
“We don't throw anything away,” joked Lt. Donald Crawford, who along with firefighter Floyd Lohr is leading the project.
Among the more intriguing artifacts is a circa-1960s training prop that simulates the fire hazard that occurs when a penny is inserted behind a burned out fuse and overloads a circuit.
The recovered spotlight remained in use on the ladder truck after it was refurbished with an enclosed cab. The truck remained in service into the 1990s.
A bugle — or speaking trumpet — used by officers in the early 1900s to yell orders to firefighters was among the historic equipment found hidden in storage.“We were just trying to clean up and we came across this stuff that we're trying to save,” Lohr said.The cleanup also revealed a mystery.A document reported that a fireman died in a fire in 1946, but contains no other information, Switala said.The firefighter's name, station, and date and location of the fire are unknown.“We're trying to research. We're trying to find out more information to try to document that,” Switala said.If firefighters can confirm the information and identify the fireman as a department member, his name will be added to the list of the two other firefighters who died as a result of their jobs.One of those men is Charlie Deal, who died while fighting a structure fire in 1987. The other is Pete Stewart, who died from occupational cancer in 2008. Deal and Stewart's names appear on the IAFF National Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial in Colorado Springs, Colo.Old nozzles, a ladder pipe and a step gun that were found could end up on display on the second floor of the station, where several pieces of Butler firefighting history are already showcased.Two narrow doors mounted to the wall as part of the display bear the names Dan and Joe, the last two horses to pull fire carts through the city in the 1800s. The doors are from the horses' stalls inside the old Central Fire Station, which stood where the City Building parking lot is.The display also holds the remains of a main underground water line made of wood.In the 1700s and 1800s, firefighters would drill into a wooden main to allow a pit to fill with water that would be pumped out and sprayed on a fire, Capt. Tom Fair said.
Afterward, a wood plug was inserted to block the hole. The plug could be removed for another fire in the area.The use of plugs gave rise to the modern phrase “hit the plug,” which is what firefighters do when they connect a hose to a fire hydrant, the firemen said.
