The Middletown Mistake Revisited: The Death of a Dream

摘要

Where do fire depart-ments come from? Where do they go? Sixty-five years ago, in August 1946, a group of men got together and started the Hamburg (MI) Fire Department, Incorporated (HFD, Inc.), the only privately owned and operated fire department in Michigan. From day one, the department was staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers. It worked perfectly well that way for almost 55 years. But now, it's out of business. In June 2000, my article "The Middle-town Mistake: Spotting It and Avoiding It" appeared in Fire Engineering. Despite the magazine's worldwide readership, few readers would have understood the true nature of the article. Even fewer could have known that the story about the Middletown Volunteer Fire Department (MVFD) actually chronicled the last desperate days of HFD, Inc.