I can tell you the
story of the fire dept. Walter Johnson,
Curtiss father, the house burned down.
He called luck fire dept. They
charged Sterling $1200 to come out and watch the house burn down—mostly burned by the time they
arrived. Dad was really angry at
them. Charge $1200 for getting there to
watch the building at the end of burning down.
Dad was really storming about it.
Dad was the town chairman of Sterling
then. I told Dad “why don’t you have a
meeting with the people in Sterling —we
could run a fire department.” “Oh no,
there isn’t enough of a crew here to run one.”
“Well you can at least try” I said.
There was a meeting and the people voted almost 100% in favor after they
heard the story of what it cost for Walter Larson’s fire.
So Sterling went ahead. The crazy thing is that Bill Skow built the
fire truck for $1600, only just $400 more than the bill from Luck of
$1200. So Dad said we will put up the
building and so Sterling
started the building. After it was
going, then some of us in Laketown went to the town meeting and agreed to take
2 miles of Laketown into the Cushing fire department. That went along for many
years and then they decided to go clear east to Danny Jensen’s. They wanted to come in so they could get
closer service. Then the County came along and said that since we fire
departments were dividing up territories we should figure it out. So now we have a territory all the way south
to I, north to the Burnett Co line and all of Sterling .
There is a mutual agreement with all the other fire departments that for
major fires we all help out.
The fire
department started with the fire truck Bill Skow built for us and a water tank
truck put together. Later we got more
equipment, vehicles, and EMT and
first responders. Then we had to build a
bigger fire department. We bought from Nick.
Just a year ago there was a wing for meetings and for smaller vehicles.
Last year there were 147 ambulance runs. There is more activity on that than fire.
Bud Jensen was
first fire chief. Then the guy who
bought out Nickie was chief for a while.
Then Larry got it. Merle was
voted in after Larry resigned. Merle is
now. It is a lot of work to keep
everything working. I am still
considered on the department. I was on
because of Dad—I was 18 then. Louie
Baker, Bud Jensen, Ed Olsen, Bud, -- about 8 of us originals. They gave me a plaque for 40 years. (I am 76)
Skow then went on
to build one for other towns too. It was
a good truck Until 2 years ago it was
around—finally they sold it for scrap.
The main fire truck now is $170,000.
Taxes come from ¾ of Laketown and Sterling .
Eureka buys
into it each year. We have more firemen
in Cushing than most places around – we have 30 now and most are young and
first responders too. There were 6 who
came from me when I had heart problems.
I have 11 stents
and a 4-way bypass. Keeps me from doing much with the fire department anymore.