Already grumbling about their forced relocation to the driveway, the discussion immediately turns to the air conditioner. It is located in the firehouse, it is D.C. Fire Department property and the department is supposed to fix it. After some snide comments concerning the likelihood of that happening, one member suggests that the association buy its own window unit. President Walter Gold quickly tables the suggestion because the group simply cannot afford that sort of luxury on its budget. The scant resources it has have to be directed to the main function of the FFA: operating the canteen and rehabilitation units that support the D.C. Fire Department at major incidents.

Since the late 1940s the FFA has operated a canteen service to provide aid and relief to D.C. firefighters on the job. Originally operating out of the back seat of a reserve fire department sedan, the FFA now operates two specially constructed canteen units and a bus designed to give medical relief to exhausted firefighters. All their resources—from the donuts and drinks they serve to some of the equipment on the bus—are paid for by donations.

A major concern for the association right now is the main canteen unit, which has been out of service since the generator broke in January 1997. Gold said they requested a new generator from the fire department, it was budgeted and a requisition was submitted in October of last year and the generator was ordered in November. After several weeks, Gold was told the generator would be delivered on March 1. Then the delivery date was changed to March 31. When the generator was finally delivered, it didn’t fit into the canteen unit. As a result, the FFA has been forced to use the back-up canteen unit, a 25-year old panel truck, for the past 18 months.

"Had I known that we’d be sitting here on May 19 without a generator in that unit, I would have paid the $8,000 to buy a new one," said a frustrated Gold at the meeting.

While $8000 is not much for a fire department with a budget of nearly $100 million, that figure represents one third of the FFA budget. Gold, one of the primary fundraisers for the association, understands that buying the generator themselves is not really a viable option for that reason. It’s just another fact of life for the volunteer organization. A shoestring budget is standard operating procedure, but it doesn’t mean that they have to be happy about it, he said.

But what the FFA lacks in funds it more than makes up for with dedication. Most of the members consider themselves "fire buffs," but by joining the FFA, they have taken that interest in firefighting to a much higher level, Gold said. This is not their hobby, it is their passion; for many, it is their mission.

Volunteers respond to emergencies through an automatic pager system activated whenever a second alarm is called to the scene of a fire. Hooked directly into the fire department’s main communications system, the FFA’s pagers automatically display the address of the fire. The volunteers respond at all times of the day or night, in all types of weather, most often in the hottest and coldest times of the year, when firefighters need the most relief.

Chris Oliphant is one of the younger members of the association and also one of the most active. He estimates that he went out on about 45 of the canteen’s 60 or so runs last year. He recalls a tire fire in Northeast Washington three years ago when the canteen unit spent 36 hours at the scene serving cold drinks to the firefighters.

"I was there all thirty-six hours," said Oliphant matter-of-factly. For Oliphant, volunteering with the FFA is another manifestation of his passion. He is employed by Maryland Ambulance Service, volunteers with the Cabin John Volunteer Fire Department and is EMT certified in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

"I like doing it to give back to the community," he said.

"Us older fellows will turn out to relieve the guys who’ve been out all night," said Jim Sullivan, a 40-year veteran of the FFA and treasurer of the group. While he admits that age has curtailed how often he responds to emergencies, he is still on the active member roster and carries a pager. He mainly works the canteen unit at special events and the fire department’s educational events, like the recent EMS day on the National Mall this past May.

***

Rich Schaffer sits at a large wooden table in the attic of the firehouse on upper Connecticut Avenue, the room that for better or worse serves as the museum for the Friendship Fire Association. A repository for over 200 years of firefighting memorabilia, the museum includes a ticker tape machine, hand-painted top hats firemen wore in the last century to and an original Matthew Brady photograph.

The building that has housed these artifacts for over 40 years was never designed as a museum, however. It was and is a firehouse. In the corner of the room, water from a leaky roof has stained the ceiling tiles yellowish-brown. A picture has been removed from that corner so that it wouldn’t be damaged. The space where it used to hang is outlined in the gritty residue of diesel smoke coming from the fire truck downstairs, a pale gray square on a darker gray wall.

Rich Schaffer is the assistant curator for the FFA, a young man who could be on a fire department recruiting poster with close-cropped hair, a tall, broad frame and chiseled features. With his job as a firefighter, a second job as a tour guide and his 15-year apprenticeship in archival preservation, he seems a perfect choice to help keep up the museum. But as he looks around the attic, he seemed discouraged.

"This is just not the right atmosphere," he said, surveying the collection. His concerns about the museum’s current location include the diesel fumes and the dry heat that gets trapped in this attic during the summers. But by far his biggest concern is that no money is allocated to maintain or improve the conditions in the museum. He notes that while the FFA has about $25,000 on which to operate, none of that money is allocated to the museum.

That fact doesn’t stop Schaffer from doing his best to try to preserve the unique collection. Schaffer envisions moving the entire collection to a proper museum space dedicated solely to firefighting history in the District, with temperature controls and archival display cases. And he even has a location picked out: Engine Company 3 on New Jersey Avenue near Union Station, which has been closed since 1993. Built in 1916, the firehouse currently sits vacant and in bureaucratic limbo. Schaffer has been working with the D.C. Preservation League trying to persuade the D.C. government to turn the site over to them for a museum.

"It’s important because it’s Washington artifacts, and there’s not a lot of Washington artifacts left," says Schaffer. "A fire museum would show a cultural aspect of the city." He also says that security has been a problem over the years and the collection has lost a lot of items to theft. Without money to operate the museum, much less make improvements, however, Schaffer is in the same position as the rest of the FFA: trying operate with almost no resources.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator