By Andrew Haffner
The Dickinson Press
DICKINSON, N. D. — Dickinson Fire Department Chief Bob Sivak said he likes to remind his fire crews to remember the ghosts of the department’s past to better understand its modern-day culture.
To bolster the message, Sivak points to a faint, ghostly image of a firefighter standing at attention in a framed picture of the 2007 Dickinson Elks Lodge fire that hangs in his office. Though the image is the result of a double exposure rather than anything supernatural, the lesson is especially fitting today, on the fire department’s 125th birthday.
Sivak explained that the original department, an all-volunteer crew known as the Dickinson Hose Co., was recognized in 1891 by the state of North Dakota.
In those days, Sivak said, the department operated as an independent entity, completely separate from the city of Dickinson.
“It was March of 1901 when city took over the equipment, but up until then, it was provided by the citizens,” Sivak said. “They themselves had bought all the equipment.”
Accounts of the early department state that the concerned citizens had made an investment of about $3,000 in 1900 to purchase a steamer and to install a cistern system to provide ready sources of water around town. Sivak said those cisterns were filled using the power of windmills built above.
After the investment was made, the citizen-firefighters decided that fire safety measures should have the backing of the city itself. The next year, in 1901, they presented their equipment to city officials, which prompted the end of the Hose Co. and the start of the Dickinson Volunteer Fire Department.
Former Fire Chief Joe Boespflug said the department was beginning to transition away from the strictly volunteer model when he first got into fire safety around 1959.
Boespflug initially served as a fire inspector until about 1961 before leaving for nearly a decade. He returned to work again as fire inspector under then-Fire Chief Joe Klein until becoming chief himself in 1976.
Boespflug said he couldn’t remember talking with any of the old-timers in his early service about the days of horse-drawn equipment, but he did remember the stories older men used to tell about the lack of equipment used to do the job.
When handling fireplace fires or chimney fires, Boespflug recalls, the early Dickinson firefighters had to climb to the roof of the burning building to lay a wet sack over the top of the chimney in order to stop sparks from flying loose and spreading the flames.
“There were guys when I was there that had protective equipment, but in days prior to that, they just walked in,” he said. “They were smoke-eaters. They did what they could do with no protective clothing, no breathing apparatus. Truly, there were people that worked hard and took a lot of risks and, I’m sure, had a lot of health problems. But they got the job done.”
In the time since he began, Boespflug said the department has changed greatly for the better. With more advanced equipment to get a greater number of firefighters safely to and through a hazardous scene, Boespflug said the resources at hand for the modern department are almost hard to believe when compared to the old ways.
On Thursday, Sivak and Boespflug walked together through the offices of the fire department’s wing in Dickinson’s Public Safety Center, which was completed last year. The men pointed out details and familiar faces in the canvas prints that hang on the walls there, depicting black-and-white memories of past fires and those who fought them.
When they got to the garage that houses the station’s vehicles, they looked through the room’s tall glass doors at the natural wetland area that lies beyond.
Sivak said with a smile that back in the department’s earliest days, when Dickinson was a sliver of its current self, the land the PSC is built on was still the “wild West.”
Boespflug joked that the spot was a better fit for horses back then before pausing and nodding at the building—and the massive trucks—around him.
“Well, 125 years ago, all of this was just a dream,” he said.
Copyright 2016 the Dickinson Press