Hometown Heroes: LMFD's Deputy Fire Marshals

Firefighting is tougher these days in that fewer people volunteer for the job, but more homeowners are volunteering to have their homes inspected for fire safety, Lower Merion's three deputy fire marshals told Patch in an interview recently.

The Lower Merion Fire Department's home-inspection program "has grown each year," said Matt Maguire, 20-year veteran of the department. An inspection involves checks of heating systems, extension cords, candles, blocked exits and other possible risks.

"Each time you go in there, you find something," said Jim McCoy, with six years and counting in the department but many years more of firefighting experience.

"Most of our fires are in houses that are full of clutter," Maguire said.

Lower Merion's seven volunteer companies (Ardmore, , Bryn Mawr, Gladwyne, Narberth, Penn Wynne and ) include about 220 volunteers, complemented by two dozen paid staff at township headquarters. Twenty years ago, there were closer to 370 volunteers, Maguire said.

Part of the difficulty in keeping staffed up, four-year department veteran Frank Hand said, is the growing battery of certification requirements to meet state and federal regulations. These include first aid, emergency medical services, hazardous-materials handling and search and rescue, among others.

Training requirements for new firefighters have grown from 28 to 188 hours. Hand said it would be helpful if departments could bring guys on more quickly.

"You can be a ditch digger, you don't need to know why you're digging a ditch," Hand said.

Hand's most memorable fire was in a Marcus Hook house in 1975—"A bunch of us got trapped," he recalled—while McCoy's was easy to identify. He was among the first on the scene when Sen. John Heinz's plane and a helicopter collided above Merion Elementary School in 1991.

Another challenge of firefighting in Lower Merion today, McCoy said, is that for some reason new construction seems more fire-prone than many older buildings, which in Lower Merion can be very old indeed.

McCoy does landscaping work in his spare time. Hand said he looks forward to doing some fishing whenever he retires. As for Maguire, he wouldn't mind teaching, but he's a firefighter for the foreseeable future. He didn't always expect to be one.

"I never even considered being a firefighter until I saw my brother do it," Maguire said. He added with a smile that, decades later, "I still haven't figured out what I want to do with my life."