Putting Out Fires and Much More on Sandy Hook

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By John Burton
SANDY HOOK– The National Park Service’s Sandy Hook Fire and Rescue Squad is one of only 22 similar units in the nation and the only one that serves a military installation.
The 140-year-old squad responds to fire and emergency medical calls for the Gateway National Recreation Area at Sandy Hook, the 7-mile long federal park jutting into Sandy Hook Bay and facing the Atlantic Ocean.
“It can be a lot of running around,” said Frank DeLuca, acting chief for the park’s squad.
The park, which includes the Fort Hancock, a historic former military installation, gets about 2 million visitors a year, about 1 million who come between Memorial and Labor days.
“We’re one of the busiest in the National Park Service,” DeLuca said.

Sandy Hook Fire Chief Frank DeLuca sits behind the wheel of the department's engine.
Sandy Hook Fire Chief Frank DeLuca sits behind the wheel of the department’s engine.

On top of that, buildings in the Fort Hancock portion of the park are home to Marine Academy of Science and Technology (M.A.S.T.), a county vocational high school; the James J. Howard Marine Sciences Laboratory; a U.S. Coast Guard station; a child day care center; and offices for some private sector environmental not-for-profit organizations.
With that high volume comes emergencies of every variety, said Rob Louden, the park’s law enforcement operations chief.
Of the park service’s 22 engine companies, the Sandy Hook Fire and Rescue Squad is one of two operating east of the Mississippi River, Louden said. The other is in Everglades National Park in Florida.
The Sandy Hook fire department was formed in 1874, back when Fort Hancock was an active military operation, protecting the New York Harbor. By the 1950s it became a paid civilian department. When the site became part of the park service’s Gateway Recreation Areas in 1974, the park service took over the responsibility for the unit, according to DeLuca.
The squad is the only park service unit nationwide to provide primary fire service to a U.S. military installation, the park’s U.S. Coast Guard station. That means squad members are called upon to assist those the Coast Guard has rescued from offshore, including people injured during boating accidents and sick passengers from cruise ships. They help treat and then transport them to area hospitals, DeLuca said.
Last year, the squad handled 161 fire-related calls, everything from building fires and smoking cars to brush and campfires. They responded to 85 medical calls requiring the use of the squad’s ambulance.
So far this year, there has been more than 100 medical calls requiring his team’s assistance, DeLuca said.
Those are not the only medical emergencies in the national park. “There are probably hundreds more medical calls that don’t necessarily involve us,” DeLuca said, noting many incidents are handled on beaches by the lifeguards.
“It really is a team effort,” he said.
Saturday, Aug. 9, was a particularly busy day for the squad, a record breaker, in fact, with the squad answering 12 medical calls. “It was running around, back to back calls,” DeLuca said. Calls ranged from minor cuts and bruises suffered during falls from bicycles to more serious medical issues.
The park’s squad consists of a full-time chief, a fire inspector (the post is currently vacant), six full-time summer firefighters/EMTs and 16 volunteer staffers, including park rangers and law enforcement officer, who can help when needed. “In theory, when there’s an emergency everybody drops what they’re doing,” Louden said.
If the situation requires, the squad can get assistance from neighboring Sea Bright and Highlands or other communities, DeLuca said.
The squad’s ambulance is a relatively recent acquisition for the squad. The vehicle was donated to Sandy Hook by the West Windsor First Aid Squad after Super Storm Sandy. Sandy Hook traditionally relied on mutual aid to take patients by ambulance to the hospital. After Sandy, with both Sea Bright and Highlands overwhelmed dealing with the storm’s aftermath, the squad couldn’t impose on those towns and sought its own vehicle, DeLuca said.
“Now we’re 100 percent self-sufficient,” but haven’t forgotten what neighboring towns have meant to the unit. “We received so much assistance from the towns, we never say no” when they ask for help, he said.
DeLuca, 45, has been a park service employee for 14 years, having worked at the Grand Canyon National Park before coming to Sandy Hook three years ago. His responsibility goes beyond Sandy Hook. He oversees safety/emergency management operations at Gateway units in Jamaica Bay, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Each winter he travels to Arizona to teach at the park service’s firefighting academy at the Grand Canyon.
The emergency unit is “a local operation, regional operation and a national operation all rolled up in one,” he said.
The work keeps DeLuca and his team busy and he finds it rewarding. Prior to the park service, he worked as a U.S. Department of Defense firefighter at the U.S. Army’s Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne. He first trained as a firefighter at the age 16 as a volunteer fireman in Parsippany and was a volunteer member of the Sea Bright fire department before Sandy when he and his family lived on Sandy Hook. Since the storm he has bought a home and relocated to Shrewsbury.
“I think what keeps me here is the diversity,” the work and the natural beauty of the site, he said. “It’s an awesome resource.”