Raymond Ragsdale, representing the Broadus VFD, receives a check from Jiggs Bilbrey, representing Denbury Onshore LLC, in the photo above, as employees of Denbury as well as Broadus VFD members pose in the background. (Photos courtesy Raymond Ragsdale)
Casey Slovek, Jiggs Bilbrey, and Raymond Ragsdale are pictured below with Fire 26, the dry chemical fire appatus rig.
By Raymond Ragsdale
Broadus Volunteer Fire Department would like to thank Denbury Onshore LLC for the support they have given our department over the last few years. In 2021 they donated 20 SCBA units or self-contained breathing apparatuses, all of them in cases.
Anyone who is not familiar with these they are a device worn to provide breathable air in an atmosphere that is immediately dangerous to life or health. They are designed to be used in hazardous situations such as chemical releases or when we have to deal with hazardous smoke such as on a truck fire but are not rated to be used in an actual fire situation. We have had the opportunity to use them mainly for training because we fortunately haven't had any actual calls that would require them.
Also in 2021, our department was able to purchase a Twin Agent fire Extinguishing System which incorporates the benefits of dry chemical and foam as fire extinguishing agents.
The dry chemical which is basically ABC dry chemical that is used in most fire extinguishers is used to knock down the fire rapidly and the foam secures the hazard by laying down a vapor-suppressing blanket on the fire to help cool it. The primary application of this unit is on petroleum fires such as a truck fire or a tanker on fire. This is a slide in unit that runs on high pressure. The problem we had was we needed a truck to put it on. Casey Slovek, fire fighter and president of our association who is also a Denbury employee after learning of our need asked his employer if maybe they would be willing to help us out with a donation towards a truck, but as it would be, Denbury just happened to have a 2007 Chevy 3500 one-ton pickup they were replacing and donated it to us.
The truck had a service unit on it which wouldn't work for our purpose but Myles Gardner had a flatbed so we traded him and Myles and Clint Hahn did all the work to switch it over and then got it to Lester Aye who got it all bolted on and then to Carey Trumps to get it all hooked up and voilà, our department now has Fire 26 added to our fleet. Denbury also donated $450 towards lights and stickers on Fire 26.
If that wasn't enough this fall our department received a very generous check in the mail from Denbury Onshore LLC in the amount of $5000 which will go a long way in our department. Broadus Volunteer Fire Department is very fortunate to have the generous support that we have from our community and our goal is to provide the emergency services with the best equipment we can get so we can do what we train to do to help out whenever we can.
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