{"id":213545,"date":"2026-06-08T10:02:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/213545\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T10:02:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:02:06","slug":"upper-darby-fire-department-issues-continue-to-smolder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/213545\/","title":{"rendered":"Upper Darby Fire Department issues continue to smolder"},"content":{"rendered":"

At its June 3 meeting, the Upper Darby Council voted to use eminent domain to acquire the Upper Darby 1 Fire Company building, after the nonprofit fire company had decided to sell its building.<\/a><\/p>\n

The fire company\u2019s action came after the township demanded that all its nonprofit fire companies send detailed statements and receipts to be reimbursed for expenses in March. Previously, the township had paid them $14,000 per month for upkeep of their buildings, fuel for the fire trucks, and other costs. However, the fire department apparatus is owned by the township.<\/p>\n

John McDevitt, a member of Upper Darby Fire 1 since 1972, said he was \u201cdisappointed\u201d by what\u2019s been going on in the township since March.<\/p>\n

He noted that the number of volunteers is declining, and the firefighters who staff the house are professional.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis fire department did a lot of things for the youth\u00a0\u2026 maybe there wasn\u2019t a father figure at home, but there were six of them at the firehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told the council to go and visit the building to see how large it is, noting that the fire company pays for fuel for the firetrucks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To Mayor Ed Brown, McDevitt said, \u201cYou should be doing everything you can to make that volunteer system work out for the community, for the taxpayers, and also for the kids who have gone on to become police officers and done other civic duties. I\u2019m disappointed, really disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Township Chief Administrative Officer Crandall Jones said even though the township wants to use eminent domain to take the firehouse, \u201cWe are required to pay market value.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, they\u2019ve hired an appraiser to put a value on the firehouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another resident asked how the township would pay for this purchase, and Jones said it would use the $14,000 a month that would have gone to the fire company, but agreed that a mortgage might be needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had volunteer firefighters who gave their blood, sweat, tears, and lives for the residents of this township, and this council and this mayor and this administration have treated those people extremely poorly,\u201d one woman said.<\/p>\n

But another woman supported the township taking the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shocked as a resident of Upper Darby for a long time, the fire department would rather sell their building than be accountable for $14,000 a month,\u201d she said. To me, they acted like a bunch of toddlers who couldn\u2019t get their way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another issue is the Upper Darby Firefighters, who are largely paid township employees responding to fires in neighboring communities that are staffed by all volunteers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Millbourne Borough is the only town so far that has an agreement with Upper Darby to send payments to defray the cost of the township responding to fight its fires.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the Monday night council meeting, officials said they\u2019re in talks with two other municipalities to ink payment agreements.<\/p>\n

The lack of volunteer firefighters is a statewide issue, although Pennsylvania offers programs<\/a> for volunteer firefighters, including tax credits.<\/p>\n

Firefighters from Upper Darby\u2019s five fire houses responded to 87 out-of-town incidents from Dec. 17, 2025, to Feb. 11, 2026, according to township information that a resident accessed through a right-to-know request. And the Upper Darby fire companies responded to 109 out-of-town incidents between Sept. 1, 2025 to Feb. 9, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the administration says they\u2019re talking to other municipalities for payment agreements, a fire department insider said the administration has actually downplayed the cost to the township of Upper Darby firefighters helping other departments, as well as the danger to local residents when Upper Darby Fire Companies are responding elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Four of those companies are staffed with township-paid firefighters. Drexel Hill, the fifth firehouse, still has volunteer firefighters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being a firefighter these days is \u201ca career path, not a hobby,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFire is a science,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of stuff behind why we do what we do. You have to understand every action is going to react to something else. If you open the window at the wrong time \u2026 superheated gases of 3,000 degrees, they\u2019re looking for air.\u201d<\/p>\n

And because it has specialized squads \u2014 water rescue, ice rescue, swift-water rescue, confined-space rescue, vehicle, and heavy machinery rescue \u2014 Upper Darby firefighters can be called to help countywide.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, any situation requiring specialized services,\u201d the insider said. \u201cThey also have a cache of county equipment and vehicles, as well as township and Firefighters\u2019 Relief Association-owned equipment,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are high-risk, low-frequency events.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time a piece of apparatus is moved it incurs a cost,\u201d he said. \u201cMutual aid to other fire departments has a risk exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upper Darby has salaries, benefits, and overtime, as well as possible disability payments if a firefighter is injured. And there\u2019s wear-and-tear on the vehicles and fuel, as well as insurance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll that has a monetary cost to it,\u201d said the insider.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we go to 500 more responses a year, that increases cost, that increases risk, that increases a lot of things. So, in the sense where we\u2019re at now, the equitable exchange of services \u2014 help each other \u2014 that isn\u2019t what\u2019s happening here. Municipalities outside of Upper Darby, who we originally relied on (to come and help them), cannot volunteer a response. You have times of day and night when they might not respond at all. They\u2019re using us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although, Springfield and Sharon Hill pay some firefighters during the day and Broomall is starting to, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpper Darby spends more time going to surrounding municipalities providing fire protection and doesn\u2019t get back the same support in return when we need it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And Upper Darby has fewer than the recommended number of firefighters, as it is, he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIdeally, we work with sixteen firefighters per shift,\u201d for each firehouse, he said. But they often don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

And fighting fires without as many firefighters as needed can add to the danger since each person must perform additional roles, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOperating with staffing levels that fall short of recommended benchmarks hinders the effectiveness of crews tackling vital emergency duties. When personnel counts are diminished, the burden of multiple responsibilities falls upon fewer individuals, inevitably stalling the commencement of fire suppression efforts and complicating the preservation of residential assets,\u201d said a December 2025 report<\/a> by the International Association of Firefighters, Local 2493.<\/p>\n

The Upper Darby firefighters made an average of $100,000 per year in 2025. Currently, neither the police nor firefighters\u2019 unions have contracts.<\/p>\n

In a related matter, at the June 3 meeting, the council approved $531,000 to purchase two new firetrucks through an intergovernmental agreement. Money for the firetrucks was approved as part of the capital budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vehicles are much needed by the fire department,\u201d said Jones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At its June 3 meeting, the Upper Darby Council voted to use eminent domain to acquire the Upper…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[91287,212,2259,813,93459,88034,147,149,148,150,57600],"class_list":["post-213545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-crandall-jones","tag-delaware-county","tag-ed-brown","tag-firefighters","tag-john-mcdevitt","tag-millbourne","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township","tag-volunteer-firefighters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213545","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=213545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}