Horsham Fire Ccompany

The Horsham Fire Company #1 has served Horsham Township and the surrounding municipalities for the last 107 years providing firefighting, rescue, emergency medical services, public safety education, and fire prevention with a combination of volunteer and career personnel. When considering the impact of a global pandemic, it is virtually impossible for any organization to say that they were completely prepared for the response to, and mitigation of such a monumental problem. We have received a tremendous amount of support from our community in terms of cleaning supplies and PPE. These donations with the additional support of our county, state, and federal partners has helped us quickly ramp up our operations for the anticipated increase in demand for our services. Horsham Fire Company is on the front lines of this pandemic. Like our brothers and sisters throughout the first responder community, we are on duty and ready to respond whenever we are needed. We have prepared multiple operational contingencies with our partners and will continue to stand at the ready no matter how severe this situation may become. We have treated and transported a number of patients who have unfortunately become infected with COVID-19 and taken all precautions to prevent the spread of the virus to our staff and other patients that need our services.

One of the most daunting and time consuming tasks we face during our response is decontamination. Coronavirus is invisible. We have no ability to confirm that we have truly eradicated it from our ambulances and equipment no matter how thorough we clean. Recently, we were made aware of a state-of-the-art decontamination system being manufactured right here in Horsham Township. We’ve been in contact numerous times with a company called Bioquell. They manufacture a system that is 99.999% effective in eliminating bacteria and virus including COVID-19. The system that they have developed has been used in hospital operating rooms to ambulances and beyond. It uses hydrogen peroxide vapor and a unique aerosolizing process to kill these deadly, invisible pathogens.

When we first learned of this technology and its superiority to other systems, we planned on looking at what budgetary concessions we would have to make to purchase one. We found out that even with being the ambulance service that covers the manufacture’s facility in Horsham, the system still would cost us nearly $30,000.  Since the system is very expensive, it wasn’t something we could just agree on and purchase from the operational budget. At the time we first discussed it, there were a number of larger capital expenditures already on the table and this was deferred to the 2021 budget. I wish we had a crystal ball back then, we would have chosen differently. As things are, we cannot currently foot the bill to purchase this valuable tool immediately, there simply aren’t funds available for it. Now, we are in a position that we feel the addition of this equipment could prevent the spread of Coronavirus and other communicable diseases and save lives TODAY. We don’t want to put this off any longer.

We are reaching out to our community to ask for financial support to complete this project. We know that everyone is affected by this in some way or another, but if we all come together now we can slow the spread and start getting things back to normal. While this is a global pandemic, it will be beaten at the local level. It is our hope that we can partner with you and other community businesses/organizations to put this equipment in service as soon as possible. Your help would make it possible for us to offer the system to surrounding police, fire, and ambulance services as well. This would make your contribution a true regional asset to public safety.

Together, we will get through this scary and uncertain event if we can rely on each other for the support we need when it matters the most. We believe times of crisis show how much this community is capable of when we work toward a common good. Thank you very much for your consideration.