Firefighters say they'll continue to help one another

Amelia and Berwick residents will have fire protection from outside agencies, regardless of the outcome of their mutual aid agreement with the Morgan City Fire Department, offi-cials said.
Both cited mutual aid agreements with the nine other departments who signed the St. Mary Parish Fire Association’s mutual aid agreement. The Amelia Volunteer Fire Department also has agreements with Stephensville and Bayou L’Ourse Volunteer Fire departments, Amelia Volunteer Fire Chief Jason Brown said. Brown is also serves as the association president.
“We absolutely have mutual aid agreements with every other fire department in the par-ish,” Berwick Mayor Duval Arthur said. “Morgan City is right now the only one that came up with this idiotic idea.”
The responses, which Arthur addressed in an interview and the Amelia Volunteer Fire Department issued in a statement signed by President Joseph Foret, come after new Morgan City Mayor Lee Dragna sent 90-day notice in a Jan. 28 letter to local fire departments and the parish that the city would be opting out of its parishwide mutual aid agreements. Dragna said he wants to sign individual aid agreements with the fire departments.
Despite the differences in opinion, Dragna said at the council meeting that once the mutual aid agreement expired, the city’s fire department still would help its neighbors.
While Berwick and Amelia responded to Dragna’s comments, the St. Mary Parish Fire Association did not have any comments as of Friday, Brown said. However, he said the association has sched-uled a Feb. 17 meeting at the Bayou Vista Volunteer Fire Department to discuss the matter. Dragna said at the council meeting that he would attend that meeting to explain the city’s move.
In his remarks at the council meeting, Dragna cited Berwick and Amelia in particular, saying that the reworking of the mutual aid agreements boiled down to finances. The Morgan City Fire Department, he said, is doing more work in other municipalities than it is receiving. Therefore, Morgan City should be compensated for its efforts.
Dragna said it costs the city $2.1 million a year to help other agencies, but the city seldom has received mutual aid from other agencies since the 1994 fire that devastated Shannon Hardware in downtown Morgan City.
He said it is “physically hurting” Morgan City, with Berwick being able to use Morgan City’s aid without providing any reimbursement.
Dragna said Berwick does not have to increase taxes to pay for fire protection that Morgan City provides them, but they get help with their fire rating with Morgan City being nearby.
“So why would the citizens of Morgan City want to foot the bill, so Berwick and other entities can profit and hurt the growth of Mor-gan City?” Dragna asked last week.
Arthur said Dragna’s move was “irrational,” and he said information provided by Dragna was “definitely 100% wrong.”
“We’re not going to pay the city of Morgan City for their fire department,” Arthur said. “They have a wonderful fire department. Look, we have a good working relationship, but that’s not our responsibility to pay for the fire department. That’s the city of Morgan City’s problem.”
In the last two years, Arthur said the Berwick Volunteer Fire Department requested mutual aid from Morgan City once, in 2019. He said that call was canceled before Morgan City arrived.
In its statement, the Amelia Volunteer Fire Department said that between Jan. 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2020, the department responded to 818 calls. Of those, four were in Morgan City and six were to other departments.
“Within the same time period, Amelia Volunteer Fire Department has requested assistance five times from Morgan City Fire Department,” the statement said.
In his remarks about Amelia at the council meeting, Dragna said there is likely a 20% chance that when Morgan City responds to a fire in Amelia that it is in an industrial area. He said Morgan City often handles the more challenging portions of the firefight, because they have the training.
In its response, the Amelia Volunteer Fire Department said while the department has just 12 active firefighters, all are certified through LSU in hazmat aware-ness and operations, and 92% have a Fire Fighter I certification through LSU. Sixty-seven percent of the department has a Fire Fighter II certification through LSU, while 33% of the department has a certified instructor designation through LSU.
The department has nine licensed emergency medical responders and two emergency medical technicians, too.
The Morgan City Fire Department, along with the Amelia and Berwick volunteer fire departments. are joined in the parish’s mutual aid pact by the Franklin, Chitimacha and St. Mary Parish Fire Protection District No. 11 (Four Corners, Sorrell and Glencoe areas) departments as well as volunteer fire departments in Cypremort Point, Baldwin, Centerville, Patterson and Bayou Vista.
The parish fire departments’ mutual aid agreement states that any department fighting a fire may call upon another department in this pact for aid, and the requested department will provide equipment and any personnel it can for the scope of the incident.
If aid cannot be pro-vided, the department contacted will notify the requesting agency, so it can reach out to another agency.
The last statement in the agreement addresses opting out.
“This agreement supersedes any previous agreement and will remain in force for five years from the document renewal date,” the agreement said. “This agreement may be terminated within 90 days upon a written notification to the participating de-partments.”
The agreement was renewed Sept. 23, 2020, with all the parish fire department chiefs sign-ing it. It is set to expire on Sept. 23, 2025.
Arthur, a longtime public servant who has served in such capacities as Berwick police chief and St. Mary Parish homeland security and emergency preparedness director, said the pact has been in existence among parish departments for at least 30 years, and he has never recalled a department opting out.
“There’s reasons why we do it,” Arthur said. He said departments can back one other and do so legally.
“That’s the whole purpose of it,” he said.