HPD Chief Andy Wood

See any similarity?

14 Brush 1

Our new Brush Truck is complete, so we thought we would post a photo of it. This is a 2006 Ford F-250 with four wheel drive. We mounted a custom steel flatbed body on it, and built side boxes to store all of our tools and equipment. We run it as a utility vehicle as well as a brush fire truck.
Thanks to the DPW guys for their help, as well as all the Fire Dept. members that worked on this project.

Old Home Day Chicken Barbecue, 2010

Saturday, August 21st was a perfect day to cook about 600 chickens on the Town Common. Once a few parked cars got moved out of the way, our 40 foot grill was assembled and a small mountain of charcoal was lit. All the birds were racked up and placed on the grill under the supervision of head chef John Pirkey. Meanwhile, the smaller tents were set up, chairs and tables placed for all the hungry folks, and drinks were chilled in our old stainless cooler. A bit before 4 PM, additional help showed up to man the serving line, and stayed in place until the last ticket was sold. After a quick break to eat themselves, everyone went into cleanup mode, and by 7:30 there wasn't much left to do. On Sunday morning, the big tent was taken down and moved to Dublin, and the grill packed up for another year.
Thanks to all the people who bought tickets, and thanks to everyone who helped out to make this a successful fund raiser for us!

Firefighter Of The Year, 2009

At our Annual Dinner held at Sargent Center in March, Jon GrosJean was honored as the Hancock Firefighter of the Year. Jon has been a department member since he moved here from Connecticut, where he also served on a volunteer fire department. He has proven to be very handy at fixing all the stuff that we manage to break.We are very fortunate that we don't have to send out all of our malfunctioning pagers, radios and other electronic equipment, we just hand 'em to Jon.
Jon has also taken over the duties of Department Secretary. He served several years as a Captain and a Deputy Fire Warden as well. He is currently Hancock's Emergency Operations Director.
Congratulations, and Thank You, Jon!

Hancock First Alarms

During the last week of February 2010, we were toned out for two first alarm fires in town, both at about 6 AM. On Monday, we had a report of a fire behind a chimney in a house on North Road. Fire was showing on both the interior and exterior of the ell upon our arrival, and the fire flashed over through out the entire room before hose lines were brought to the door. An aggressive attack kept the worst of the fire damage to the ell, although the rest of the house suffered some smoke and water damage. Three Hancock firefighters were injured in the first 15 minutes of the incident, but only one required hospitalization and surgery for a badly broken wrist. These photos show the damage inside after the room's contents were removed, and the exterior damage in the area of the chimney. A corroded woodstove thimble was determined to be the cause of the fire. We are thankful to the fire departments of Antrim, Bennington, Greenfield, Peterborough and Dublin for their help at this incident.

On Friday of that week, we had another first alarm to a house on Depot Road. An overheated woodstove with a Metalbestos chimney had ignited the ceiling joists above the stove. The first crew squeezed through a tight attic hatch with their air-packs, and carefully dug through mounds of loose insulation to find the burning timbers and extinguish the fire without flowing too much water. Although we had to tear down a section of the ceiling, damage was limited to the area around the stove. Once again, Mutual Aid towns responded to Hancock, but this time we did not require their help. We figured that our trucks brought 6,000 gallons of water to the scene, but we used about three or four gallons. A Carbon Monoxide detector gave the occupants their first warning that something was wrong; they are very fortunate to have discovered the fire when they did, as it was only minutes away from spreading throughout the entire attic.

Mutual Aid to Antrim &Greenfield fires

February 2010 has been a bad month for fires in the area. On February 8th, a three story building on Main St. in Antrim caught fire. Hancock units were called in to help provide water to supplement the Antrim hydrant system. We set up an engine and a tanker to draft water from the Handle Shop mill pond at the base of High Street, and the two trucks pumped well over 100,000 gallons up the hill to the fire. A crew of our younger guys also helped out running attack lines on the fire.

On February 16th, a 200+ yr old house and barn in Greenfield also caught fire, reportedly caused by heatlamps in the barn. This was a very remote location, and Greenfield had a difficult time establishing an adequate water supply. Our engine was set up to pump water from a fill site on Slip Road to fill tankers. Our larger tanker helped shuttle water to Porta-tanks, where it was pumped several thousand feet down the narrow road to the fire.

New Brush Truck!

After years of discussion, we have finally purchased a new pickup to replace our old, underpowered, and too small Brush Truck. We bought a 2006 Ford F-250 from a dealer in Hooksett in January, and are in the process of building it into the truck we need. The Ford came with a snowplow that we didn't need, so it was removed and sold. We will be removing the bed and replacing it with a larger flatbed that we found on eBay. Walt of Walt's Signs in Jaffrey came in and did his usual excellent job of lettering up the truck for us. Jon Grosjean has done all of the electrical work needed- re-installed a radio, siren, and wired up a lightbar for the roof. We should have the new 14-Brush-1 unit fully in service by the time Spring rolls around.
Like our Rescue Truck, this vehicle was purchased without any tax money; the Hancock Fire Dept Association used it own money to buy it. We figure it represents about 10,000 chickens from our annual chicken barbeque!