OBSERVER Photo by Anthony Dolce Members of the East and West Dunkirk Fire Departments gather at the Dunkirk Town Board meeting to present their proposed budgets for 2022. East Dunkirk Fire Chief Kyle Damon, standing, asked the board to look into a piece of equipment that could be used for both departments.

As the Dunkirk Town Board was looking to approve the budgets for both East Dunkirk Fire and West Dunkirk Fire, the East Fire Department had an interesting piece of equipment they wanted approved. Most of the budget is supplies and due to COVID-19, the cost of supplies has been inflated. Additionally, it was noted that there were a lot of EMTs needed to recertify, which also takes up a chunk of the budget.

But the big purchase that the Fire Department wished to make was that of an extractor. An extractor is a piece of equipment used by fire departments to thoroughly clean their protective equipment, in order to keep themselves and their families safe in their own home.

“Any time you go to a fire, you’re obviously exposed to numerous carcinogens,” said East Dunkirk Fire Chief Kyle Damon. “You take that stuff home in your vehicle, to your family and kids. There’s a report that found that firefighters’ children are 27% more likely to develop cancer because of exposure to this.”

Damon added that firefighters are 250% more likely to develop cancer than the average person because of exposure to harmful smoke and that 68% percent of firefighters will develop cancer in their lifetime.

“Everyone wore it on their gear, it’s in the fire truck,” Damon said. “It’s in your heart, it’s in your hair, it’s on your skin. You go home, now those clothes are in your washer where your kids’ clothes are and you use a towel that the kids might use. It’s very eye-opening information and it’s something we really want to take care of now.”

The cost of the extractor is around $12,000, which is a big cost to make for one purchase, but Damon made it abundantly clear that it’s something that would make firefighters and their families safer.

“It’s something we have to look at,” Damon said. “We have to look out for our people, our families, and our children.

At this point, we have to step forward and do now and be ahead of these other departments that are waiting. We don’t want to wait.”

Damon noted the call volume has increased greatly because of places like WellNow that are now in business, making the need for supplies, as well as calls, much higher. In 2017, the department had 193 calls, this year, they’re at 280 calls, and the department has nine active members.

While the city of Dunkirk Fire Department has an extractor, Damon said it’s tricky to use theirs because of the nature of the East Dunkirk Fire Department being volunteer based. Because they all have other jobs.

“We don’t have the gear to take eight sets of gear out of service to drop off at headquarters,” Damon said. “If we had this machine at our hall, we could put it in the machine, go to work, and come back and have it done. This is much more cost effective than sending out to a company every time we need it done. We have to incur that cost on one side or another.”

Although it’s not productive for East Dunkirk Fire to use the city of Dunkirk’s extractor, to help supplement the cost and increase its utilization, Damon added that they’d be happy to have West Dunkirk Fire come use the extractor. Additionally, the idea was thrown around to discuss splitting the cost with the town of Sheridan, who East Dunkirk Fire works closely with anyway.

“We don’t want to just keep it to ourselves,” Damon said. “We want to help out our fellow brothers and sisters as well. We don’t want to open it up to every department in the county because we’d constantly be out there not using it ourselves, but the two towns, it would be beneficial to both of us.”

After everything, the East Dunkirk Fire Department’s budget, including the extractor, would be $173,704, but Damon added that they are constantly searching for grants to help offset that. With the budget proposal on the table from the departments, Town Councilman Juan Pagan said that helping out the Departments is an important endeavor.

“It’s crucial we help them out,” said Pagan. “I don’t know what it would cost our township. Thank God we still have people willing to do this and keep this cost at a minimum to us.”