Meet Rusty Held, Woodlawn Fire Chief

Name: Russell “Rusty” Held        

Age:  50

Lives:  South Whitehall

Family: Wife, Deana; daughter, Katie, in South Carolina; stepson Billy; stepdaughter Brittany, granddaughter Mackenzie

Job: Water operator with the South Whitehall Water and Sewer Department

Fire Company: . He's Fire Chief.

Training so far: There’s a long list. I joined the company in 1974 at age 14, and have had continuous training since then. Specifically, my most recent was officership training, but the company as a whole trains every Monday night including runs with the three other companies, Cetronia, Greenawalds and Tri-Clover, which is in North Whitehall but responds to our calls as well.

What’s it like being a firefighter? It’s neat. There’s no specific reason why I do it; it’s something I do because I want to help people. There’s also a brotherhood and sisterhood of people who you wouldn’t normally know otherwise. But there’s a bond between us, and we wind up making friends with people who share our interests, like working on stock cars for example. We have 45 volunteers in our company; 30-35 of them are on the active roster, including one woman on the fire team. The rest are support staff who do things like clerical work.

How do your loved ones feel about you putting your life in danger? My wife gets a little nervous whenever I leave on a call. I always make sure to kiss her goodbye because you never know if you’ll come back. We run about 500 calls a year, including assists with the paramedics. Most of the major fires are at night, not during the day, when there’s more activity and people report things sooner.

Tell us a story you’ll never forget about your firefighting experience: I guess that would have to be the fire at the Ziegler Pallet Company in Ormrod in 1988. We were up all night and into the next day; the fire was everywhere. There were at least 8-10 companies that responded, but the good thing was no one was hurt. (An account of the fire states 23 agencies were involved, fighting the fire and working on the follow-up investigation, which determined the cause was arson. Even though thousands of wooden pallets were lost, more than $1.5 million in adjacent property was protected). There were also the two big fires at Dorney Park that were really memorable: one when the carousel was destroyed in 1983, and the other when Castle Gardens’ ballroom burned down (1985). We could see the flames from the fire company when we left the station.

What would you tell people interested in joining your fire company? Come on down! We’re always looking to expand the company. We accept new volunteers as young as 15. They can’t go out on runs until they’re 16, but they can go through training in the meantime. We do all of our training in-house. Anyone interested should come to our Open House during Fire Prevention Week in October.