It is my intention to continue my quest in these articles to write about people, places and things that I love about the fire service of this great State. I know of no other agency that I have had more to do with and have a greater attachment to than the Boone County Fire Protection District. Three of our five family generations have significant attachment to the O’Fallon Fire Protection District because I was a young member there, along with my father and grandfather being previous fire chief’s in that community, but my heart and my fire service home will always be Boone County. I have had the good fortune of having two generations of involvement at Boone County since I was the first fire chief of that organization and our son; Doug has been a part of their organizational structure for nearly forty years.
MY FIRST ENCOUNTER
I moved to Columbia in the fall of 1963, fresh out of Oklahoma State University with a Degree in Fire Protection and a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Industrial Education. I really figured I was “hot stuff” because I had landed a job that would allow me to travel my home state and work with fire departments.
The offices of Firemanship Education and Civil Defense training were in an old frame WWII vintage building directly behind Jesse Hall, the main administrative building in the middle of the campus. I was there one afternoon when my boss, Bush Walden, received a visit from Gene Thurman, the President of a group called the “Central Missouri Radio Squad”. He explained that their group wanted to start a fire department to protect the rural area around Columbia. There had been a house fire earlier that year west of Columbia in which an elderly handicapped woman had died and the group had already helping the Boone County Sheriff, Bud Elkin, with things like child searches and other emergencies.
Gene was given lots of good advise by Director Walden (Years later, Bush served as President of the Board of Directors of the BCFPD after his retirement from the University) and after the meeting Gene mentioned there would be a work session on a panel truck that the radio squad was working on to hall broom rakes and pump cans for brush fires. That very evening! The work was being done at a place called Hill Brothers Service Station and he gave me the address. My instructions were to look for and meet a guy by the name of Pat Barnes. Mr. Barnes, I am told, is in the milk delivery business and has donated this truck to be the first piece of equipment for the fire department.
Being new in town and the opportunity to meet new folks that had the same passion for killing fires was exciting, so off to Hill Brothers Garage I went that evening. Little did I know that the Hill Brothers were true “brothers” and their place was not in the best part of town! So, I go into the bay of the service station where I see an old Chevy panel truck partly sanded down for a new coat of white paint and it’s looking pretty sad, but there is nobody in sight and the place is wide open.
I then hear voices from the back room so I went to investigate and see if I can find this Pat Barnes guy to ask if I can be a member of this radio squad group. I open the door to find five or six guys down on their knees shootin’ craps. So I say “Any of you guys Pat Barnes?” and the only white person in the group gets up and introduces himself! What a great way to start a close friendship that lasted for decades only ending with the untimely death of John Patrick Barnes a couple of years ago. As far as I know, Pat never met a stranger and would do anything for anybody in the world at the drop of a hat. He held the position of captain in the original radio squad fire department and later the first assistant chief spot in the BCFPD for decades. He lived the radio squad motto “ a helping hand”.
MOVING ON
In 1964, an abandoned chicken house on Route PP Northeast of Columbia became the first home of the CMRS Volunteer Fire Department. The Pat Barnes panel truck did survive its revival at the Hill Brothers Garage and a fine 1942 government surplus pumper was acquired from state surplus for the tidy sum of $500. Don’t ask how a non-profit, non-government organization like a citizens band radio club was able to access state surplus! You don’t want to know, although I am sure the statute of limitations has run its course by now.
Those apparatus are shown in the photo of the original fire station in this article. It was built on ground acquired from the Hickam family and was built by members of the department on Route PP across from the entrance to Pine Grove Mobile Home Park. Gene Havens was the president of the radio squad at the time and was in the bridge building business. He was the only person out of the 15 or so members who knew anything about the assembly of a metal building so he was the construction foreman. The parts for the building were delivered on the site with little or no instruction from the company so lots of time and energy was spent, and some Jack Daniels, trying to figure out what part went where.
John Dineen was elected by the membership to be the Radio Squad Fire Chief. He was a safety specialist for the Columbia Mutual Insurance Companies and had a work schedule that was flexible enough to spend time with the department.
At that time, the only source of income for the department was the sale of “fire tags”. Because of his work contacts, John had lots of interaction with folks in rural Boone County and was invaluable in promoting the sale of $5 a year memberships to fund the organization. His wife, Velma was also a godsend because they had a CB radio and fire alarm phone in their home and she, along with many other wives, provided dispatch services.
In 1968 John’s work schedule and business ventures required him to step out of his post and I was elected to fill the CMRS Fire Chiefs spot.
In 1970, state laws were adjusted to make the formation of fire protection districts in out-state Missouri easier. The volunteer firefighters of the Central Missouri Radio Squad (now informally being known as the Boone County Fire Department) campaigned actively throughout Boone County in an effort to form what was to become the first out state fire district. With a voter approval rate of 375 ayes and 229 nays, the Boone County Fire Protection District was formed on the 11th of July 1970.
The first Board of Directors moved quickly to establish additional fire stations in Rocheport, Hallsville and Harrisburg. I was appointed to be the first fire chief of the BCFPD on the day the board was provided with the assets of the radio squad. Coy again was the first board president and served for several years. He was a great asset, a business-man and rural farmer who had great people skills.
As Boone County grew, so did the fire district. With the tax revenue, new apparatus, protective clothing, training and staff could be provided for and services expanded.
In 1977, my role with the Fire and Rescue Training Institute increasing and the fire chief’s responsibility expanding, I determined a change was in order.
A young man by the name of Steve Paulsell had joined our forces in 1970 and had proven to be a highly dedicated volunteer. In 1972 the board decided the district needed a full time person to work on special projects and provided needed maintenance on the every increasing fleet of vehicles and facilities. By the time I determined it was time to let go in 1977, we had promoted Steve to a Deputy Chiefs position and he was the logical choice for fire chief. It was a fairly simple process. I gave Steve my fire chiefs helmet and he passed his deputy chiefs helmet to me. By that action, he became the first Career Fire Chief of the Boone County Fire Protection District. And I became the first Volunteer Deputy Chief.
The Board of Directors appointed Chief Paulsell to the position of Fire Chief, which in my judgment and many others was the best thing that happen in Boone County since those 375 folks voted to form a fire district in 1970. Thus starts a 38-year era that I like to call the “Paulsell era of progress”. We all know that hundreds of folk made contributions that made the district successful, but Steve provided the leadership, and for that and the lifelong friendship we developed, I will always be grateful!
THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OF EXPANSION AND PROGRESS
• In 1977 the Fire District initiated its Emergency Medical Services First Responder Program. This was one of the first programs of its kind in the country and now comprised the vast majority of emergency responses within the Fire District.
• Also in 1977 the Columbia/Boone County Joint Communications Center went online. This agency combined the dispatching functions of all emergency services in Boone County.
• In 1978, the Boone County Fire District was instrumental in working with Boone County government to adopt and implement building and fire safety codes in Boone County.
• In April of 1981, the Boone County Fire Protection District put before the voters its first capital improvements bond issue. This 1.5 million dollar was overwhelmingly approved by the voters and provided for the construction of a new fire station in the Prathersville area and the Rockbridge area South of Columbia. Eleven new pieces of fire apparatus were added to the fleet and protective equipment for firefighters was enhanced.
• In 1991 another capital improvement bond issue was proposed, along with an increase in the general revenue fund. The voters again supported the growth of the department by approving these measures. Based on this approval, an additional twelve pieces of equipment were purchased; new fire stations were established on Route E and WW, Sturgeon and Centralia, Additions were also made to the stations in Harrisburg and Rocheport. When each of these stations were added, a massive recruitment program was required to staff the stations with an increasing number of individuals who continued to step forward to become one of Boone Counties unique volunteer firefighters. Another innovation was coming into it’s own and living quarters were added to fire stations so that volunteers could actually reside in the fire stations. This practice has been in place since and to date over sixty live in firefighters provide instant responses from a department that is still staffed by volunteers, with the exception of the career administrative staff.
• The 1990’s saw the organization continue to expand with a number of specialty teams developed. In 1995, the district set out to receive a federal designation as a Federal Urban Search and Rescue Task Force. As usual, any task worth accomplishing was accomplished and the Fire District, under the banner of Missouri Task Force One, is now one of 28 FEMA Urban Search and Rescue task forces in the United States and is available for deployment to disasters throughout the country upon a Presidential disaster declaration. The task force is staffed by individual from within and outside the fire district and results in the donation of over 100,000 hours of training and deployment time from over 200 dedicated rescue specialists. As a federal resource, Missouri Task Force 1 is on call for federal disaster response and, upon activation, must be on military aircraft or on the road in six hours with a 70-person team, four search canines and 100,000 pounds of equipment. Assistant Fire Chief Doug Westhoff has been the task force leader since the task force’s inception and has supervised a number of major deployments including the World Trade Center, Joplin and New Orleans. Needless to say, that makes me damn proud!
• The Fire District responds to large wild land fires in the state under a cooperative agreement with the Missouri Department of Conservation and has deployed wild land firefighting teams to western States in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service.
• In 1998 fire district received nation recognition for their public fire and safety education program called “Survival Kids”. This life safety program is taught in all 4th grades in the district by volunteer firefighters and has been adopted by many fire departments world- wide. Also, in 1998, voters approved another capital improvement program that added another 16 pieces of fire apparatus to the fleet, a number of fire station locations and again, additional folks in Boone County came forward to increase the volunteer staff and are proud to call themselves Boone County firefighters.
THE PROGRESS CONTINUES
Fire Chief Steve Paulsell retired from the Boone County Fire District in 2008 and Scott Olsen was promoted by the Board of Directors to fill the Fire Chief’s position. Under his leadership, the district continues with many of the core values developed over the years by the hundreds of individuals who have made contributions to the safety and well being of the citizens of Boone County Missouri. Here are a few interesting facts.
• The BCFPD is the largest volunteer fire department in the state protects approximately 500 square miles of northern Boone County and has a staff of nearly 200 volunteers who donate over 100,000 hours of time to their organization annually.
• The Fire District operates 14 fire stations, a massive state of the art headquarters facility, which includes maintenance shops and much of the Task Force 1 equipment storage and a comprehensive training facility.
• Over the years 14 former members of the BCFPD have become Fire Chiefs in other communities.
NOT BAD FOR FORTY-FIVE YEARS, HUH?
FFAM
