The police departments aren’t the only ones looking for space.
The New Lenox Fire Protection District has a building program under way, and work has begun on a new structure at U.S. Highway 30 and Prairie Street to replace the aging fire station on Church Street.
“It’s going to be a headquarters, a 20,000-square-foot station with space for offices and equipment,” Fire Chief Ken Hossack said. “A lot of things are on the drawing board. We’re maintaining as the community grows.”
When Hossack became chief in 1978, the 36 square miles covered by the fire district were sparsely populated. Today, 34,000 people live in New Lenox and unincorporated New Lenox Township.
“Our amount [of firefighter-paramedics] has pretty much stayed the same,” he said.
But he said there are more full-timers, 14 in all, plus the chief, a code enforcement officer, a public education officer and 31 paid-on-call firefighter-paramedics working out of four stations–on Church Street, Schoolhouse Road, Nelson Road and Cedar Road.
And fighting fires is only part of the job, Hossack said.
Many of the department’s calls are for medical or other emergencies, such as traffic accidents.
Anticipating growth
“We look at everything that’s going on in the community,” said Hossack, who sees future industrial and commercial development as the next challenge.
An industrial development has been proposed near Haven Avenue and Gougar Road, and a commercial development has been proposed along U.S. 30.
“That will impact us, both through the construction phase and when the developments open,” he said.
Growth is characteristic of the area, according to Frankfort Fire Protection District Chief Jim Grady.
“The one thing that we can predict is that [the area] will continue to grow,” he said. “Our biggest challenge is the increased activity due to more growth.”
When the chief started his firefighting career as a volunteer 26 years ago, the fire district had 200 calls a year. Last year’s total was 2,900, he said.
The fire district has 52 firefighter-paramedics, 15 of them full time and the rest paid on call. There are plans to hire nine more full-timers, he said.
The firefighter-paramedics work out of three stations: on Nebraska Street, on Frankfort Square and on a 5-acre site on U.S. Highway 45, toward the south end of the 50-mile-square fire district.
Multidepartment training
The station on U.S. 45 serves as a training center for many area firefighter-paramedics, not just Frankfort’s, who have focused on anti-terrorism training over the last three months. Besides working together on training projects, area fire services have also formed a Combined Area Response Team to help them respond to all their responsibilities.
“It’s truly a team concept. You might have a quarterback, but you’ve got a lot of other people protecting the quarterback,” Grady said. “You might have five or six departments going to attack a fire.”
When Mokena Fire Protection District Chief Ted Golden joined his department in 1991, there were 5,000 residents in the 12-square-mile district, which covers most of Mokena, part of unincorporated Frankfort Township and a portion of the new village of Homer Glen.
The population is now 15,000, Golden said.
And fire officials are watching for more growth to the north.
“We’re right now keeping an eye on the area around Homer Glen,” Golden said. “A lot of that land is farmland now but will require more attention if it develops residentially.”
The fire service’s 12 full-time, 12 volunteer and 20 part-time firefighter-paramedics work out of two stations built in the 1990s, one on Wolf Road and one on 191st Street.
As in other departments, the Mokena fire service has seen its function expand. More than half of Mokena’s fire calls are for ambulance service, Golden said.
Safety education is also a priority, especially for schoolchildren.
“We hit every school, every grade, every classroom,” he said.
Firefighter-paramedics must be able to deal with hazardous-material problems as well as fires and medical emergencies, he said.
The Mokena Fire Protection District also has a 12-member dive team to cope with possible dangers posed by the retention ponds that handle drainage in residential subdivisions, Golden said.
