{"id":156243,"date":"2026-04-03T11:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T11:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/156243\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T11:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T11:22:07","slug":"drexel-hill-volunteers-react-to-controversy-of-fire-station-briefly-out-of-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/156243\/","title":{"rendered":"Drexel Hill volunteers react to controversy of fire station briefly out of service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garrettford-Drexel Hill volunteer firefighters have replied to last week\u2019s controversy<\/a> in which their station was placed out of service.<\/p>\n

The station was out of service for 13 hours with no calls missed during that time.<\/p>\n

Fire company officials confirmed that for several years they had followed a verbal policy that truck units needed to have a Fire Officer One in command to respond on calls, however they said that was an issue on weekends when most career firefighters were not on duty.<\/p>\n

Drexel Hill firefighters said that requirement was due to all career firefighters being off duty on the weekends except for the on-duty deputy chief. During that time, the volunteers handled all calls on weekends at all stations, however that changed in late 2024<\/a> with career firefighters switching to a seven-day-a-week schedule.<\/p>\n

Upper Darby Fire Chief Nick Martin said last week the Fire Officer One standard is in place to make sure crews make sound and safe decisions when delivering their service, and that requirement existed since 2020 in the department.<\/p>\n

In a news conference, Martin said Garrettford-Drexel Hill wasn\u2019t told to go out of service, just that they could not respond without that certified officer. Their chief made the decision to go out of service.<\/p>\n

Garrettford-Drexel Hill firefighters said they were notified March 25 at 4:40 p.m. by memo requiring that a Fire Officer One trained officer be on all apparatus on all days of the week.<\/p>\n

The station has 15 members who have taken the required class.<\/p>\n

While the policy had been in place previously, due to the weekend accommodations, the memo of March 25 was the first time the 24\/7\/365 policy was placed into immediate enforcement, the Garrettford-Drexel Hill firefighters said.<\/p>\n

The release went on to say that \u201cDrexel Hill was directed by the Chief of the Fire Department, through the on-duty Deputy Chief, that if we did not have staffing consistent with the memo of March 25, 2026, we were to go out of service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was not our decision. This was a directive issue, and we followed the chain of command and the rules outlined in the memo,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

The fire company noted that for the last 120 years the fire company has operated as a nonprofit, providing highly trained lifesaving services at a fraction of the cost of career firefighters, to the residents of Upper Darby Township.<\/p>\n

Volunteers also thanked residents for their support and said they look forward to working with the Chief of the Fire Department to find a sustainable solution that will allow them to continue their 120-year mission of providing high quality, low cost, life-saving services to the residents of Upper Darby Township.<\/p>\n

Read the statement below.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garrettford-Drexel Hill volunteer firefighters have replied to last week\u2019s controversy in which their station was placed out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[212,182,139,28,210,147,149,148,150],"class_list":{"0":"post-156243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upper-darby","8":"tag-delaware-county","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-top-stories-dtd","13":"tag-upper-darby","14":"tag-upper-darby-headlines","15":"tag-upper-darby-news","16":"tag-upper-darby-township"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}