Young Pennsylvania Volunteers Answer Siren's Call

When D.J. and Brian McCaney, 15 and 17, went dashing out the door, their parents didn't ask the Delaware County teenagers where they were going. They just told them to be careful.

D.J. and Brian have been junior members of the Brookhaven volunteer fire company - the same one to which 14-year-old Chris Kangas belonged when he was killed two years ago, struck by a car while bicycling to the station to answer an alarm.

Like Kangas - the McCaney boys got the bug early. "I just wanted to be a firefighter since I was a kid," D.J. said.

Kevin McCaney, their father, chuckled: "We had about 100 fire trucks in the garage."

There's a long tradition in this country of teenage volunteer firefighters. So it was painful for the young McCaneys and others like them when the federal government recently refused to change its ruling denying death benefits to the Kangas family on the ground that juniors - ages 14 to 17 in Pennsylvania and 16 to 17 in New Jersey - aren't allowed to operate the fire hoses or enter burning buildings and, so, aren't full-fledged public safety officers.

Kangas' name also was not allowed to be placed on the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial.

It's true Pennsylvania junior firefighters are not permitted to actually fight fires. But they come running when there is an alarm, ride the trucks to the scene, help set up hoses and water-guns, and help pass out the air packs and other equipment.

The work is close enough to the flames to concern a parent. "We're worried every time there's an alarm," Kevin McCaney said.

And close enough to get a teenager's pulse racing. "It's scary, no matter what," said Shannon Connolly, 17, a junior member of the Main Line's Radnor Fire Company.

"We give them the hose to put out the fire," said D.J. McCaney, whose brother recently turned 18 and will become a senior member of the department. "Without us, what are they going to do?"

That, indeed, is the question, said U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.), who has introduced legislation to grant full federal recognition and benefits to juniors, who "respond to every disaster known to mankind."

Weldon himself was a junior firefighter and later a volunteer fire chief.

Given post-9/11 concerns about homeland security and given the problem some volunteer fire departments nationwide have recruiting members, Weldon said, the Justice Department's decision sends a dangerous signal. It could discourage teenagers from becoming junior firefighters and thus have "implications nationwide," he said.

Junior firefighters' responsibilities vary from state to state. In Pennsylvania, they are governed by laws that strictly define and limit what they can do and how many hours a week they can work, similar to statutes for any working minor.

Not surprisingly, junior firefighters can't respond to alarms during school hours. They have curfews almost identical to those for junior driver's licenses.

Nevertheless, juniors, who receive training not only in firefighting but also in first aid and other emergency situations, play an important role in volunteer fire companies. Of the 70 members in Brookhaven, nine are teenage boys and one is a teenage girl. And about half of the seniors, including most of the chiefs and officers, were once juniors, too.

The situation is similar at other volunteer fire companies in the region, many of which actively recruit teens. In Warwick Township, Bucks County, for example, the Hartsville Fire Company is holding free firefighters camps on Wednesday nights this month for youngsters at least 14.

Officials say it's too early to tell whether the Justice Department's Kangas decision will affect the recruitment of juniors.

"No one really knows," Thomas L. Savage 3d, executive director of the Pennsylvania Fire and Emergency Services Institute, said last week. "A lot of fire companies are not happy about this."

In the firehouses, juniors say they are treated as equals. They may get their share of ribbing, but it's not like pledging a fraternity or going through basic training, and the teens give as good as they get.

At a recent Brookhaven drill, 16-year-old Kyle Marley was explaining what it was like to be a junior when a veteran shouted: "Don't listen to him, he's 26."

Marley retorted: "Yeah, I put green stripes on my helmet just for fun." The green stripes are all that distinguish a junior's uniform from that of a full-fledged firefighter.

At one of the Brookhaven company's recent regular Tuesday evening drills, a team of juniors was practicing the right way to hose down a fire. Another hose team, of seniors, was working at their side. At one point, a chief ordered the seniors to hose down the juniors, as firefighters do to protect those working closest to the fire from the heat and flames. What resulted suspiciously resembled a water fight.

Despite such back and forth and the age differences, volunteers young and old say a fire company is a family. Which is why Connolly said that although her parents worry some, "they also know that the people here are going to look out for me."

The last thing fire companies want is to do anything that will drive the youngsters away. "You want to get them hooked when they're young, so they're going to stay with you," Assistant Brookhaven Chief Joe Zamonski said.

Firefighting often is literally a family affair. Many members' parents and grandparents were, or are, volunteers, too.

Still, being a junior firefighter is not considered a typical part of teenage life. Connolly said she joined the Radnor company because she wanted to do something interesting and different.

When others find out what she does, "people are surprised," said Connolly, a Newtown Square resident who will be a senior this fall at the Academy of Notre Dame de Namur in Villanova. "They don't believe me."

After she graduates from high school, she'll go to college, but she likes being a volunteer firefighter.

"I love the Radnor Fire Company, love the people here," she said. "I would hope to keep up with it when I get older."

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