Mar. 23—Hoses, helmets and vintage pumper trucks dating from as early as the 1800s bear witness to the legacy of volunteer firefighting in Greensburg.
The equipment can be seen in the Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department Museum, behind City Hall on South Main Street.
Select items from that collection will temporarily have a new home at the Westmoreland Historical Society Education Center at Historic Hanna’s Town in Hempfield. The firefighting artifacts are being loaned as part of the celebration of Westmoreland County’s 250th anniversary.
The Greensburg museum is providing an 1875 hand-drawn hose cart for inclusion in the historical society’s exhibit, “Westmoreland 250! Celebrating our Story with 25 Objects,” slated for April 14 through the end of the year.
“It will be in the ‘service and sacrifice’ section, to honor volunteer fire departments throughout the county,” said Lisa Hays, executive director of the historical society. The local Adam Eidemiller company provided transportation of the cart in a box truck Wednesday.
The hose cart originally was deployed in an industrial setting and was donated to the museum by fire equipment collector Dave Shafran, a Cook Township resident and former Unity firefighter.
The Greensburg museum also is sending the historical society a leather helmet worn by a West Newton firefighter in the late 19th century and, from the same period, a megaphonelike bugle.
“It was used at the fire scene by whoever was in command,” said Michael Hartung, the museum curator. “If there was a lot of noise, his voice could get amplified.”
The museum has two early pumper trucks dating from the mid-1800s, but Hartung said lighter hand-drawn hose carts took advantage of an innovation that occurred later in the century: installation of the first municipal water lines in Greensburg.
“The hand carts were more easily pulled,” he said. “You could hit the hydrants as opposed to bringing in a pumper.”
The museum features two restored 20th century pumper trucks: a 1932 Mack truck and a 1949 Seagrave model. There also are displays of firefighter and fire department band uniforms through the years.
More than 1,100 model emergency vehicles were donated by North Belle Vernon firefighter Charles Horan and his wife.
The Greensburg Fire Department dive team was among emergency units that assisted at the scene of the 2002 Quecreek Mine rescue in Somerset County, and the museum has retained a camera that was used in dropping a cage down a shaft to reach the nine miners trapped underground, according to Hartung.
“They used that camera to determine the stability of the shaft,” he said.
Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jeff by email at jhimler@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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