A fully volunteer ISO Class 3 fire department honorable serving the guests and residents of River Vale, New Jersey since 1923
A fully volunteer ISO Class 3 fire department honorable serving the guests and residents of River Vale, New Jersey since 1923
To celebrate 100 years of dedicated service to the Township of River Vale.
The River Vale Volunteer Fire Department, Chemical Co. #1 was organized and incorporated in August 1923. For the most part, the newly organized Fire Department was made up of the Men’s Community Club of River Vale who used a room above the Beck Grocery Store for their meetings.
What does this mean? A company called the Insurance Services Office (ISO) rates fire departments across the country on a scale of 1-10, 1 being the highest and 10 being the lowest. Essentially, ISO rates how well-equipment a fire department is to extinguish fires effectively. Many factors are included in the grading such as, water supply, training, fire prevention, communications and dispatch, types and amount of apparatus size, recruitment and retention and more. Once ISO completes the evaluation for a department, they take the score and send it to each homeowners insurance company. This lowers insurance costs for homeowners in town.
The River Vale Fire Department is an all-volunteer department that consists of 55 dedicated men and women. It is our mission to protect the lives and property of the residents, visitors and businesses of the Township of River Vale.
67% of all firefighters in the United States are volunteer, with 50% being between ages 30 and 49 years old. Volunteer firefighters are crucial to the survival of the community.
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In the event you experience an emergency that requires fire department intervention (Fire Alarm, CO Alarm, Structure Fire), you should immediately evacuate your home and call 9-1-1 from a safe distance. You will be connected with one of our dispatchers at Northwest Bergen Central Dispatch, from there, the dispatcher will ask you a series of questions pertaining to your emergency until they receive enough information to dispatch. Upon dispatch, all RV Firefighters receive the message via pagers and an app called eDispatches. Your address, type of emergency and any pertinent information will be provided to us. An example of a dispatch message would be as follows, "Central Dispatch to the River Vale Fire Department, respond to 123 Main Street for the reported house fire, caller confirms seeing flames in the home, all occupants are evacuated, cross streets will be First and Second Streets."
The answer to this is simple, we come prepared! With 5 apparatus and close to 60 members, we take every opportunity to put as many trucks on the road as possible for every emergency.
When you call PSE&G to report a utility emergency, it is within their protocol to dispatch the Fire Department. They do this to protect you and their technicians when they arrive. We often times stabilize the situation while a PSE&G technician is en route.
The River Vale Fire Department is an all volunteer department. This means that there are not personnel present at the fire station at all times. Members respond to the Station whenever an “event” occurs – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
River Vale uses sirens to summon the volunteers. Two sirens are located in town. Pagers are also issued to the volunteers as an additional method of notification. Both the sirens and the pagers are activated by the Central Dispatch located in Ridgewood.
Sirens are activated depending on the nature of the emergency and the time of its occurrence. For example, during daytime hours, there are more fire calls but fewer volunteer firefighters available to respond. Therefore, the sirens sound between 7:00 AM and 11:00 PM for all alarms. When life safety is involved (e.g., a car accident or “working” fire) sirens sound no matter the day or the hour. The sirens are not activated for standard alarms between 11:00 PM and 7:00 AM. This eliminates a large number of sirens overnight because the most frequent fire emergencies are for automatically generated fire alarms (e.g., : smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, or water flow alarm from a business.]
Technical issues with Pagers and Cell Phones
Pagers suffered from both operational and human errors. Over the years, there has been recalls of the pagers by the manufacturer. There are also dead spots in town where the pagers do not consistently work. Pagers sometimes need repair and moreover, a volunteer simply might forget to turn the pager on, or charge it. Or, the volunteer might not carry the pager with him or her at all times.
Many volunteers are also alerted via text message of fire calls. Like pagers however, cell phones have their limitations. The dispatcher may forget to send the text message alert. In addition, cell phone coverage may delay the receipt of the text message. Also, similar to pagers, the text message alert is dependent on the volunteer having his or her cell phone nearby at all times and the battery being charged.
Noise Reductions
State and federal noise standards are not applicable to fire sirens. Emergency sirens are exempt from New Jersey’s EPA sound level standards, and federal law does not establish any standards for how much noise may be emitted from sirens. Specifically, N.J.S.A. 13:1G-3(d), expressly permits municipalities to sound certain types of alarms. In addition, N.J.S.A. 13:1G-4.2., establishes specific noise standards and explicitly exempts fire sirens from those standards.
Summary
The sounding of sirens helps ensure that the Fire Department can promptly respond to an emergency. In most any emergency, timing is a critical factor for both the life safety of any potential victims as well as the firefighters themselves. Most members of the Fire Department can relay numerous examples of instances where for whatever reason, they were not alerted to a fire call by pager or text, but they did hear the sirens sound and as such responded to the station. In the fire service, we have seen time and again the the tenor of an incident can change very quickly. An activated smoke detector can turn into a working house fire in minutes. Accordingly, the use of all means at the town's disposal to ensure that all available members respond to any potential emergency as promptly and safely as possible is critical to protecting the lives and property of the citizens of River Vale.
Finally, the sirens also serve to alert drivers in the area that there may be emergency responders on the road. Moreover, the sirens alert the person who requests assistance that help is on the way. The sirens also help prevent accidents involving fire trucks and the children on their way to and from schools located in the town.
In conclusion, the Fire Department believes that the sounding of the sirens is essential to public safety and that solely relying on pagers and/or cell phones would do a disservice to the Department’s ability to adequately protect life and property within the town.
When we arrive to your house/business, we begin a thorough investigation to figure out what caused your alarm to activate. Each firefighter enters the building equipped with tools and the officers carries a thermal imaging camera to see if there is fire hiding behind the walls. The officer in charge will send some firefighters to certain parts of the building to find the activated detector. Once it's found, the crew will take it down and check the expiration date and clean it out, sometimes alarms are activated by dust or spider webs or expired detectors. Regardless, other firefighters will check to see if there's smoke or fire. If you have an alarm system, we will reset it for you. If we see anything wrong, we will advise you to get it corrected.
An “Overheated Boiler” condition is created when a heating unit reaches an exceedingly high temperature and pressure, and will not shut off. This condition, also commonly referred to as a “Runaway Boiler”, is considered unsafe and very hazardous to both emergency responders and building occupants. This condition is primarily caused by coincidental failures of redundant safety controls that maintain safe temperature, pressure, gas supply, and water supply.
There are some calls that simply require extra help. One example would be for a call at one of the schools in town. If we are dispatched to any kind of emergency at any of the schools when it is occupied, we receive Automatic Mutual Aid from Old Tappan. If we are dispatched to a structure fire and it is confirmed, the incident commander will ask for a working fire assignment, which brings several towns to the scene. For example, a first alarm working fire assignment for a fire South of Piermont Avenue would bring to the scene, River Vale fire units, a Hillsdale Ladder Truck, an Old Tappan Engine and a Westwood Rescue Truck.
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