A caravan-style car drove off the end of the Steamship Authority dock and was trapped underwater with four passengers inside.
This was the premise of a training scenario staged Sunday morning for the Oak Bluffs dive and rescue team.
“An elderly person had a medical event and they gunned it down the terminal,” said Oak Bluffs fire department acting chief John Rose, who conducted the dive team’s first car rescue drill.
Traci Monteith is afraid of heights but she loves depths. She’s been diving in Vineyard waters for more than 10 years, but only recently has she been working toward certification as an advanced diver on the Oak Bluffs fire department dive team. On a recent Thursday evening, she wet-suited up alongside two other members of the team for their first night dive.
An independent review of the Oak Bluffs fire department turned up a series of needed improvements, including better record keeping, clearer policies and procedures and improved communication between town and fire authorities.
If a patient at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital needs to go off-Island for further treatment at a mainland hospital, chances are the Oak Bluffs fire department will provide the lift. For more than 12 years the town fire department has been the primary transportation provider for the hospital, ferrying patients via ambulance to hospitals throughout New England and beyond. The off-Island transports provide both a vital service to the hospital and a financial boon to the town through a special purpose fund that is used to buy equipment and pay personnel.
Tension Inside Oak Bluffs Fire Department Leads to Emergency
Services Separation
By JAMES KINSELLA
Following mounting dissension in the Oak Bluffs fire department, the
chairman of the board of selectmen moved this week to make the ambulance
service a separate department.
Selectman and board chairman Gregory Coogan said he made a
management decision Wednesday to split the two services, a move he said
was long overdue.
"I think there are inherent problems in the two
departments," Mr. Coogan said. "I think they have been at
odds over time."
The Oak Bluffs fire department received a $65,500 grant this week through the Department of Homeland Security to install a new ventilation system at the fire station that will remove toxic diesel exhaust from emergency vehicles inside the station.
Oak Bluffs fire chief Gilbert (Peter) Forest said the funding will be used to install the much-needed system. The grant was secured through the Department of Homeland Security’s Assistance to Firefighters program with the assistance of U.S. Sens. Edward (Ted) Kennedy and John F. Kerry and Rep. William Delahunt.
The little red 80-year-old Maxim Oak Bluffs fire-truck shines in its new home, a little fire-station off Wing Road. The newly shingled barn and museum is appropriately placed across from the much larger Nelson W. Amaral Fire Station.
Donations in the amount of $90,000 helped to house the truck, and now after a year of effort and fund-raising, they’ve run out of money.
A year after his court-ordered reinstatement as fire investigator in Oak Bluffs, Peter Martell says the town is not honoring his position. Last June a Dukes County superior court judge found that Oak Bluffs fire chief Peter Forend had no legal or justifiable reason for dismissing Mr. Martell. In May a Dukes County superior court judge ordered the town to pay some $35,700 in attorney’s fees.
But Mr. Martell said the fire department has not made good on his reinstatement.
