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Community Report: Who’s Putting the Fires out in Brookville?

Meghan Glynn

Hello again all! The semester is coming to a close pretty quickly, and I know that I for one am ready to throw away the books and hit the beach instead.  Anyways, as there are still a few remaining weeks with you guys, I figured I might as well give you something to pass your time with and read.

So this week, I wanted to raise a question that is seemingly worthwhile: why doesn’t Brookville have it’s own fire department?  It seems strange to me that a town that is home to a university (of any kind, not just necessarily C.W. Post) wouldn’t have their own fire protection services, but would instead rely on it’s neighboring towns.  I’ll put it this way, there’s not only one department covering the area like most towns such as Levittown, Wantagh, Hicksville do for their own, but instead Brookville is covered by a combined effort from Jericho, East Norwich and Roslyn Heights.

I placed a call into the Village of Brookville offices, my favorite place in the world, and received this answer: “I’m not sure.”  The clerk that I spoke with told me that in the early 1930’s the village was mostly estates, so they contracted out the three districts listed above and it’s been that way ever since.  The system they have in place seems to work, and the unnamed woman informed me that there isn’t any friction between the districts, “they each know their boundaries,” she told me.

John O’Brien, the District Supervisor for the Jericho Fire Department, seemed to echo a similar message, “From time to time people do cross over district lines when responding to emergencies.  It’s a big road [Rte. 107], and we don’t always get 100% accurate information on where incidents occur, but we’ve never had a problem working together.”  O’Brien also went on to say that the membership of Jericho’s department is proud to serve a portion of the Brookville community, and that they are more than happy to provide aid whenever there is an emergency situation in the area.

So then, having gained the information I have while looking into my question, I want to revise my thought.  Instead I’ll ask this: in a community that seems to be growing, and is now home to more working families than just estate owners, is it okay to keep a system in place just because it seemingly works, or would it be better to start establishing a new system all their own?  Perhaps that old cliché saying really does work: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.  What do you guys think?

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