By SHARON O’MALLEY
Courtesy of Branchville VOLUNTEER FIRE CO
College’s Park’s oldest fire station turns 100 this year.
Founded in 1924, the Branchville Volunteer Fire Department will celebrate its anniversary with an invitation-only September gala, complete with dress uniforms and appearances by firefighters and “friends of the company” whose service dates back half a century.
“We’re counting the minutes, literally,” said Fire Chief Michael T. Hughes, who oversees approximately 60 volunteer firefighters and emergency medical responders and a fleet of two lime-yellow fire trucks and three ambulances.
Hughes, who joined the company in 1974, has served as chief for 12 years on and off since 1987—something of a family tradition, as his grandfather, both parents, uncle and brother served in some capacity over the years. “We’re talking about 280 years of combined service,” Hughes said.
The chief’s fondest memories are of “being 25 and crawling down those houses on fire,” Hughes said. “I’m not 25 [anymore] and there’s nothing like it. It’s the biggest wow factor.”
Over the years, Hughes said, the job has changed. Of the 2,400 calls the VFD answers each year, 60% to 80% are for emergency medical services rather than fires. At the same time, the number of fires has reduced, while their intensity has increased, Hughes said.
“Everyone and their mother calls 911 for an ambulance,” he said, noting that car accidents, falls, heart attacks and other traumas dominate the calls for help.
The volunteers have changed, too. During Hughes’ heyday, a tightly knit core group of volunteers would arrive at the fire house every day to wait for the calls to come in. Today, many volunteers ride only the required three, 12-hour shifts a month, and most of them are University of Maryland students.
“Kids around [Branchville VFD] volunteered from the 50s to the 90s,” Hughes said. “We knew we were going to stay there for 15 years. We drank beer together, chased girls together. And then we got older. People filtered out … got married, had kids. [Those kids] are more into computer stuff. Boys Clubs have folded. People don’t get out to play ball anymore. Fire companies suffered. Now nobody from the community joins fire houses.”
In fact, volunteer fire departments nationwide are short on volunteers, as the job becomes more complex, training requirements—and their cost—increase, and family commitments take priority over volunteer work.
Branchville’s crew felt that shortage most acutely after Prince George’s County, which paid Branchville’s career firefighters from the 1960s until 2003 and again, briefly, five years later, cut off funding.
“That hurt,” Hughes recalled. “That was a historical moment” that forced the department to rely solely on volunteers to staff all shifts. “Our well dried up … and we had to make due.”
Then, in the mid-2000s, a group of Branchville regulars set up a table at Maryland Day on the University of Maryland (UMD) campus, and fortunes changed.
An infusion of UMD students made the volunteer rolls robust again, Hughes said. “With them, we became stronger; you could say we thrive. … That’s what’s keeping us going.”
Three students live full-time at the fire station, which has six individual rooms and a 12-bunk dormitory. Several others crash there during overnight shifts.
Still, Hughes speaks wistfully of the days when the fire house was a social hub, sponsoring softball teams and bowling leagues and hosting social events.
“It’s kind of sad,” he said. “Like a lot of things in the country, it gave way to computer games and people having to work and cut back on the volunteer status [because] they don’t have time.”
Instead, the fire hall carved a place for itself—and a steady stream of income—from Casino Nights, which started in 1990s and allowed administrators to “pour our resources into a newer and more modern fleet. … We had almost no money in the late ’80s,” Hughes noted, “but by finally pulling the trigger on starting the Vegas Night at our firehouse, that enabled us to do things we could only dream of.”
That dream ended, of course, with a county ban on charity gambling. So the VFD turned to bingo, and the county started charging residents for ambulance calls and sharing the money with local fire houses.
“It keeps a lot of companies afloat,” Hughes said.
The company also does an annual fundraising drive, sending an envelope to every resident’s home to ask for donations.
For all the success of the century-old company, Hughes said, nothing compares to the “satisfaction of kicking that fire in the ass. The red man—as the fire is called in the service—doesn’t care who you are … if things go wrong, they go wrong. … Maybe things will go right.”
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Branchville VFD’s greatest historical hits
- A group of locals started planning to open a fire department on Branchville Avenue. In 1924, the service officially opened.
- The Branchville Fire House was built on the site of the VFD’s small, original station. Today, a lounge and kitchen sit on the original site.
- Fire engine driver Jim Melton, a lieutenant, died on the job from a heart attack he had at a fire. Melton is the only on-duty casualty in Branchville VFD’s history.
- Branchville firefighters, along with other VFDs in the county, were dispatched to the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Branchville Chief Michael T. Hughes served as the incident commander for Prince George’s County that day.
- Prince George’s County stopped paying the salaries of career firefighters at the VFD, saying the proximity to College Park and Berwyn Heights volunteer fire departments made paid staff at Branchville unnecessary.
2008 or 2009. University of Maryland students began volunteering at the VFD en masse after the Berwyn crew recruited them at Maryland Day.
- Branchville VFD celebrates its 100th anniversary.
