Over a three day period in April 2007, the men and women of the CHFD confronted what some will call the second worst storm to face our state in recent history. Statistics aside, no one needs to tell us about the challenging conditions we faced over those three days. Our personnel answered over 200 calls for service, 136 calls on April 16 with a peak between 08:00 and 16:00 hours.
We modified our deployment to include two salvage teams and reassigned the Fire Marshals Office staff to conduct field assessments to help prioritize the incoming calls for service. The use of these resources allowed the staffed firefighting companies to retain local integrity and respond to priority incidents in their first due area. A number of Cherry Hill Fire Police members took off from work and began to stand post at numerous downed wires and flooded road incidents. Their response afforded us the chance to free up fire and police units to handle other calls for service. Some of the fire police units stood post for over six hours before relief arrived. In addition, Cherry Hill Fire Co. 1 provided an on-duty unit to assist in answering calls as needed during the period of peak activity.
Interagency coordination is critical during a period like this and the CHFD helped staff Cherry Hill Township’s Emergency Operations Center to coordinate our combined efforts. Even before this occurred, the CHFD made direct contact with: Pubic Works; CHPD Supervision; and Camden County Communications to synchronize our efforts.
We recognize the extraordinary work of our members and have received a number of complementary calls about their efforts. It is always important that we recognize the conditions before us, asking where do we fit, and what can we do? Sometimes we cannot fix a failing basement wall or stop neighborhood flooding, but we can be there, knee deep with our residents, trying our best to lessen the impact. We applaud all the extraordinary efforts demonstrated by our members. Whether on-duty, off -duty, career or volunteer, our members perform these actions without recognition and for the benefit of those in need.
