Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department
Oglethorpe County, Northeast Georgia
Peace in Wolfskin

wolfskinvfd@yahoo.com


Mark Your Wolfskin VFD Calendar!
Send additions, corrections, etc. to wayne@sparkleberrysprings.com.
Please note that as of the beginning of 2015, Wayne's descriptions of training are accurate, but not official. For the official reports along with attendance please contact the new
Assistant Chief and Training Officer, Charleen Foott (foott@att.net).


May 2015

May 5: (Tue 7:00pm): First Tuesday Oglethorpe Firefighters Association meeting (Farm Bureau Office in Crawford).

May 7: (Thu 6:30pm): First Thursday Business Meeting.

May 14: (Thu 6:30pm): Second Thursday Training Meeting. Discussed response responsibilities and tactics, esp in terms of going directly to scene or station, eventually decided should go to station first except: two others have indicated they're headed there; and take a look at scene but only if on way or out of way by less than 1 minutes round trip. No more than 1 minute to check out scene. Also exemption for repeated false alarms from same residence over short period of time. Strongly suggested using number of fire depts called as indicator of potential seriousness.

May 16-17: (Sat/Sun): Firefighter Weekend. Charleen and Glenn left 5:30am on Saturday and returned 6:03pm on Sunday evening. Each took a 16-hour course. CF: Training Operations in Small Departments: This course is designed to provide students with some basic tools and skills to coordinate training in a small fire/EMS organization. A training function in a smaller department typically may include conducting training drills and coordinating training with a nearby larger city or state training function. Exam: Passed. GG: Principles and Practice of Command: This course will present principles and foundations for maintaining a command presence during emergency incidents. In addition, sie ujp, tactics, strategies, and effective communications will be discussed. No exam.

May 21: (Thu 6:30pm): Third Thursday Training Meeting. Thermal Imager was charged while pumper was run for 1 hour. Practiced using booster hose, PTO, and pump.

May 28: (Thu 6:30pm): Fourth Thursday Training Meeting. Chainsaw training: TM and MP went over prepping chainsaw with gas mix and oil, chain blade tightness, starting and safety measures, and fundamentals of cutting up medium diameter trees. (Phyllis arrived and took photos for newsletter, 30 minutes.)


June 2015

Jun 2: (Tue 7:00pm): First Tuesday Oglethorpe Firefighters Association meeting (Farm Bureau Office in Crawford).

NOTE: Jun 3: (Wed 6:30pm): Business Meeting. Changed to Wed night Jun 3 because of unexpected difficulties with attendance on Thu Jun 4 by several members. Sorry! This happens very infrequently.

Jun 6: (Sat 9:00am): County wide training - Search and Rescue. 1096 Elberton Road. See OCFFA Description for details and contact info.

NOTE: Jun 11: (Thu 6:30pm): NOTE: Postponed to 6:30pm Friday Jun 12. Second Thursday Training Meeting. We'll be looking over SalemVFD's brush truck. Sorry about the late notification.

Jun 18: (Thu 6:30pm): Third Thursday Training Meeting.

Jun 25: (Thu 6:30pm): Fourth Thursday Training Meeting.


July 2015

Jul 2: (Thu 6:30pm): First Thursday Business Meeting.


Sunday, December 13, 2009

Red Letter Dates in History

Shall we look in the Book, hmmm?



Glenn unearthed three volumes of old Wolfskin Fire Department minutes. I shook out the mouse coprolites and selected a few entries.

From the Oct 1978 meeting discussing the formation of WVFD. Note the last paragraph. The more things change, the more they stay the same! Do you know, they used to call themselves Wolfskinners.



Here are some nice tidbits from Nov 29 1982. The first truck? The very file cabinet from which Glenn recovered these records, "kept in a safe place" all these years! And we still have that desk, too, though it's lost one drawer sometime in the last 27 years. No telling what was in it.

Early safety issues; and oh that barbecue shelter. We finally filled it in two years ago.



O tempora, o mores!



An early attempt at inventory, June 4 1992. And look who makes their first appearance! I believe we had just completed our training so we'd been around for six months already.



Astute observers will notice the doubly crossed out name.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Annual Smokey Road Parade

Saturday, 12 December 2009, was the annual parade down Smokey Road in Crawford. This year Queen Lewis took over the directorship from Delbra Favors and the route of the parade was reversed, but otherwise it was the usual event. Mostly Fire Engines, Ambulances, Rescue, Sheriff, Muscle Cars and an odd float or two. There was an empty Athens Transit bus towards the end of this year's parade.

The local Fire Departments of Crawford, Arnoldsville, Devils Pond, Beaverdam, and Wolfskin each brought a pumper. I was unable to identify the second pumper in line. It was probably a second Crawford pumper but my apologies to another department if was theirs.

Josh Adams rode the back of the Wolfskin pumper. Brian Mixon drove and Jack Adams and I were passengers.


12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Crawford's Pumper, Engine 1
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Devil's Pond New Rescue Pumper
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Devil's Pond Volunteers
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Arnoldsville's New Rescue Pumper and an Oglethorpe County Rescue Vehicle
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: The Famous Beaverdam Rescue Pumper, Engine 10
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Wolfskin's Pumper, Engine 1
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Wolfskin Volunteers Josh Adams with Jack and Esme, Glenn Galau, and Brian Mixon; Josh's Wife Clare
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Wolfskin's Jack Adams and Brian Mixon
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: The Muscle Cars
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: The Mystery Rescue Pumper with Crawford Engine 1 in Front
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Off We Go!
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: The View Ahead of the Wolfskin Engine
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: The View Behind through the Mirrors on the Wolfskin Engine
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Highway 78, the End of the Parade
12 December 2009 Smokey Road Parade: Beaverdam Volunteers at the End of the Parade; What Someone ahead of us Lost

Friday, December 04, 2009

We Have a Board

We have a Board!

Our annual business meeting was held last night. The bylaws, largely boilerplate tailored to the specific needs of the department, require *three* meetings with specific agendas. The arcana were detailed by Glenn, our parliamentarian, in the post below and occasion moments of mirth as we inevitably mess up.

So here are the members of the Board of Directors for 2010:

ChiefEd Frey
Asst ChiefWayne Hughes
TreasurerCary Fordyce
SecretaryLisa Vaughan
Community MemberAlan Kotch
Community MemberBill Cosgrove
Firefighter MemberBrian Mixon
Firefighter MemberJim Kitchens


In addition to electing a slate of the Board of Directors, the second meeting, of firefighter members, voted for Firefighter of the Year, and this year that turned out to be me. Brian will turn his tiara over to me in February.

In other news, Ed unearthed several old disks that contained some historical training and officer records dating back to the department's inception in 1982. I've placed these on the right sidebar with the option of an excel download or a webpage format. I've added the appropriate meta tags so that these files don't get indexed by search engines. There are some holes in both documents so please feel free to email me with additions and corrections.

And I would guess it was John Wampler, bless his heart, who reconstructed these records.