Niagara Falls ARS Fire Department: Ready for the call

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Anthony Reyes
  • 914th Air Refueling Wing
NIAGARA FALLS AIR RESERVE STATION, N.Y. --  The Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station Fire Department’s Rapid Intervention Team was called and deployed to recover a downed firefighter with Frontier Volunteer Fire Department during a structure fire in the town of Wheatfield, September 21, 2024.

About four minutes after the RIT arrived on scene, they received a MAYDAY call for a firefighter down. The team quickly located the firefighter and removed him from the burning structure. The team then ran assessments on him while medics put him on oxygen and began running vitals. He was taken to a local hospital and released within 48 hours.

“The Rapid Intervention Team has a specific purpose to set stage near a burning structure and help downed firefighters while other companies are fighting the fires,” Lt. Mike Siejka explained. “Our job is to do exactly what we executed that day.”

During the recovery, Lt. Joseph Bowman was positioned at the man’s head, Capt. Aaron Walker was at his torso, and Firefighter Jared Hicks was at his feet.

This was also Hicks’ final shift with the fire department.

“It's like a fog. There’s so much adrenaline that hits you at one time when the chief yells that MAYDAY call,” said Walker. “It happened so fast, but that’s where our training comes in because the community relies on us for RIT.”

The team has been on scene and on standby hundreds of times, but this was the first time they had been activated for a downed firefighter, and the first MAYDAY call in Niagara County in more than 10 years.

“It’s almost like you blackout. You don't even have to think,” said Bowman. “At that point everything becomes second nature.”

Bowman and Walker attributed the success of this mutual aid effort to the close knit relationship that everyone in the fire station has. Bowman said everyone in the station would drop what they need to do in order to help one another.

“What’s so great about the crew is we’ve worked and trained together numerous times, so we know each other pretty well,” said Walker. “We knew exactly what we were going to do and we accomplished everything flawlessly.”

“The first 10 years I was here we didn’t do much mutual aid at all. The way it was ran we worried about here and only here,” said Siejka. “Now, it is completely different, which is really cool and great for us and the local community.”

The fire department here works within the community by responding to calls, but they also train with local fire departments, hold classes and seminars, and support local schools and organizations.

October is fire prevention month so we are going out to a bunch of different schools with the trucks and handing stuff out to the kids, Walker stated. We love to get out and help the community as much as we can, in any way possible.

Walker, Bowman, and Siejka all mentioned how important working within the community is and the passion the fire station has for serving.

The NFARS Fire Department stated they will continue to train and be ready for whatever is needed on or off station.

“For us to get out of our station within 90 seconds and be on the road, that's huge for locals because they know we're coming,” said Walker.