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Earl Steven started at the Flin Flon Fire Department in 1960 and retired in 1998. He was also employed at the Company. Earl stated that when he started as a volunteer fireman, he would receive $1.50 an hour while fighting fires and $2.00 an hour for attending practices. When the men were called from work to attend a fire they would also continue to receive their pay from the Company. The volunteer firemen were expected to attend a certain number of practices a year and attend meetings that were held once a month. Earl lived in the old fire hall for two years, at that time there were six firemen who used to stay there. The old hall was beside the pump station across from the Flin Flon Hotel. He was a volunteer under Fire Chiefs Walter Redman, Fred Livsey, Don Still, Reuban Hagan, Gord Donaghy and Don Trudeau. Some of the fires that Earl remembers were the Flin Flon Hotel fire which happened shortly after Earl started on the department. They got the call about 4 a.m. and they were still fighting it at 10 p.m. that night. Then there was the Terrace School fire in the spring of 1965. It was a bitterly cold day, about 35 below with a wind. The fire started about 11 a.m. when the kids were in school but happily everyone got out safely. It took until about 9 p.m. that evening to get the fire out and then someone stayed all night just to be sure there were no flare-ups. Also in the 1960's the former Flin Flon Motors burned to the ground (located where Super K is now). The Royal Hotel had a fire before Don Still took over, recalls Earl. See 'Fire' P.# Con't from P.# In about 1971 the old Imrie block in Channing had a fire. There was also fire in Channing in a store owned by a French woman. There was also a big house fire on Adams Street. In 1977 the Elks Hall on Church Street burned to the ground. Walter Kittle was rescued through a window and up on to the roof. Also in 1977 the Modern Dairies on Green Street burned. Then a few years later there was the McIsaac School fire (old Willowvale School) as well as a Company Dorm fire. The Warehouse fire at the Company was in June of 85. There was a terrible house fire on Bellevue in the late 1970s or early '80s. The Flin Flon Fire Department moved into their new building in January of 1981. By the time Earl retired, the volunteer fire fighters were getting about $15 per hour and they kept their gear at home and just went directly to the fire. He said at one time there were only 16 fire phones and whoever had a phone, when the call came in, the fireman's wife would have four other firemen each to call. Earl recalls going to the conference system in about the 1980s and the call would come over the regular phones and shortly after that they went to pagers. Earl stated that the "Jaws of Life" and other extended equipment came in about the same time as the phone system changed. The masks had improved a great deal too. First they just had what was called a chemox mask which was basically just a filter mask, then the air masks that came in during Fred Livsey's time. They have their own tanks that they recharge and still do for Creighton and Denare Beach. See 'Really' P.# Con't from P.# The air tanks hold about 30 minutes worth of air depending on how excited/hyper the individual using the tank is during the fire. Earl recalls firemen like Al Maloney, Cliff Clark and Doug Gourlay "who really taught me a lot and were really good guys". Earl had some close calls in his fire fighting career. In the Flin flon Hotel fire he said: "If it hadn't been for Don Still, some of us wouldn't have made it". He went on to say: "There was Mike Garuk, spud McKenzie and myself, we got caught in the stairs and couldn't see through the heavy smoke and fire. Don got us out". He said in another fire in Channing, he and Larry Willard were in a basement and "we couldn't see where were going because of the smoke and it was a dirt basement with about four feet of dirt in front of the windows and we couldn't see to find our way out". However they managed to get out okay. In another fire on South Main, the fire had started upstairs and "we were going down into the basement and I fell into a sump pump area that had no cover on it. Luckily in all the years that I worked on the Flin flon Fire Department there was no one that got seriously injured". There were a few times when guys would be kept over night in the hospital due to smoke inhalation but that was all. "I have to say that Rueben Hagan was the best Chief I had," said Earl. "He was an excellent teacher and had the ability to get through to us. He could reach us on any level and he never got excited, and kept his emotions under control regardless how bad the situation was." Earl says that there was a "great camaraderie working with the guys and we'd often play cards together in our spare time. We relied on each other, our lives were in each other's hands". Earl spends his retirement curling, golfing and doing wood working as well as tinkering with lawn mowers and other small engines. Thank you Earl, for sharing some interesting fire fighting history with our readers! Editor's Note: For our readers who enjoy Gail Baker's weekly articles on people in our local area, her feature articles will now appear weekly in our Wednesday editions. Watch for Gail's next article this upcoming Wednesday, September 24.
