Apr 22, 2020 3 min read

The Canonsburg Volunteer Fire Department hopes to continue to submit articles here to keep the community informed of what we are doing, whether it’s a community function we will be part of, talking fire prevention or updating recent fire and emergency activity we have been involved with.

First, the year-end report to council showed the department responded to 276 calls in 2019. This was an increase over the previous year’s 235 calls. While 43 of these were EMS related calls, the remaining 235 were considered fire type calls. These consist of actual fires, hazardous conditions, false activation, weather-related incidents and other good intent responses. We were averaging seven firefighters per response and spending roughly 43 minutes per call. There was slightly over $300,000 worth of total dollar loss for the year and unfortunately experienced two fatalities with one being a carbon monoxide incident and the other a highway fatality. The department also spent over 5,000 hours in training, meetings, maintenance and public relations.

The highlight of 2019 was adding five new members in December. These five men come from different walks of life but have all come to us with a commitment of service to the community and wanting to give back. They are, and as they appear in the picture from left to right, Paul Newell, new to the area coming from Fayette County, where he has been a firefighter, paramedic and is the Operations Director of Air National Ambulance out of the Washington County Airport. Sean Connor and his family are recent transplants from Texas. He is a real estate agent with Realty One Gold Group Gold Standard. Shawn Johnson is a 2012 graduate of Canon McMillan and a 2016 Graduate of Auburn University, where he was also an Olympic trial finalist in track. Cody Murphy is the youngest of the group, just recently graduating from high school and works at Quick Silver Golf Club. Dan Flinner, who originally was from Charleston, W.Va., moved here in 2010, where he met his wife, and they moved to Canonsburg with their two boys. Dan works for Dish Network.

In an atmosphere, both statewide and nationally, where volunteering for anything is becoming a thing of the past, we were very fortunate to get all five of these men to come on board and join an already dedicated group of firefighters that has a legacy and history that goes back to the late 1800s. These five, along with another recent member, Mike Herron, are all now enrolled in Essentials of Firefighting class being conducted at the County Firefighters Training Facility in Chartiers Township, to then take their Firefighter 1 National Certification after completion.

We continue to look for additional members for the department. If anyone is interested, we meet every Monday evening at 7 p.m. for training except for the first Monday of the month which is our business meeting at 8 p.m. Or, you can stop by anytime you see vehicles at the station. If the doors are open, anyone will be happy to talk with you and provide a pamphlet describing the department and what it takes to become a member.