The early history of the Freeport Rural Fire Department is a story of neighbors helping neighbors in times of fire and other emergencies. In the department’s infancy it took the vison and foresight of these neighbors to begin adequate protection and response to fire emergencies in the rural areas around Freeport.
Events that drove the creation of Freeport Rural Fire and the organization’s reaction to events in the community over the years are the legacy and character of what shapes the Department today. It has been shaped from within by dedicated volunteers, by veteran firefighters training the rookies — not only in firefighting techniques but also in how we discharge the duties entrusted to us.
Humble Beginnings
From rather primitive conditions, nearly 70 years ago, the character and welfare of our Department has continued in an unbroken chain, passed on from generation to generation of volunteers, through years of limited budgets and with equipment that often was not sufficient to extinguish a fire.
Ii was in 1949 that Fred Bangasser, Robert Lamm and Howard Homan took on the task of providing fire protection to the four townships that encircle Freeport. The area at this time was not protected by the City of Freeport nor the surrounding municipal fire districts… protection was haphazard at best. A taxing district board was soon established and it contracted protection to the Freeport Fire District for over 20 years until 1961.
The first board of trustees purchased a pumper with a 250-gallon tank capacity, a hose and 35-foot ladder. The City of Freeport agreed to house the fire truck and the board paid two city firemen to man the truck and respond to rural fires. The men depended primarily on property owners and neighbors to help battle the fires. If the tank went dry and there was no cistern or creek nearby, the structure was usually lost.
By 1958 the trustees began to canvas the four townships to recruit four volunteers from each township to help the two city firemen responding to rural fires. These 12 men trained with Freeport city firemen once a month to become firefighters. In those days it was not unusual for the volunteers to show up in everyday clothes to fight fires in bitter cold and rain because there was no funding for firefighter gear or equipment.
A Referendum Passes
In 1960 the trustee board fought for a referendum to be put on the ballot for money to establish the Freeport Rural Fire Department – it passed in 1961 in the amount of $80,000. With these funds the new Department purchased and leased land for one dollar per year to build three fire stations, six fire trucks and gear to outfit 24 firefighters. The stations were ready for service that same year.
The Department soon began to take shape with a main pumper, a 4 x 4 and three truck chassis equipped with new altered fuel delivery truck tanks to be used as 1,000-gallon tank trucks. About the same time, the number of firefighters increased to 40 volunteers equipped with helmets, boots, coats and tools for fighting fires.
Training was formalized under the direction of Kip Beninger from the University of Illinois Fire Service Institute. Fire alerts at that time were received in firefighter’s homes by “Plectrons”, a 1960s state-of-the-art warning system device. Pagers came on the scene in the early ‘70s, and calls were eventually moved from a private answering service to the Freeport 911 center in the 1990s.
Fifteen trucks have been purchased since 1961, with the present fleet consisting of three 1,500 gpm pumpers, four 10,900-gallon capacity tankers and two four-wheel drives. In 1976 the ambulance service was formed, operating as their own organization with 40 members.
Freeport Rural Fire Department is unique in that we do not operate from a central station. The rural fire district is shaped like a doughnut covering 72 square miles, surrounding Freeport’s city limits. The three stations, located on Henderson Rd., Baileyville Rd., and Pearl City Rd., each serve their respective areas, but will respond to calls from all areas depending on the severity of the call.
