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Chief Roof explains lack of reimbursements to Towanda Fire Department
TOWANDA, Feb 04, 2012 (The Daily Review - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
At the most recent meeting of the Towanda Borough Council, Chief Bill Roof said he was entirely responsible for the fact that the Towanda Fire Department has not received any reimbursements from insurance companies for the expenses it has incurred over the past five years in fighting fires and assisting at the scenes of motor vehicle accidents.
Two other fire departments in the Towanda area -- Wysox and North Towanda -- collect thousands of dollars each year in reimbursements from insurance companies for the expenses they incur at the scenes of emergencies, such as the cost of flares and foam, and wear-and-tear on vehicles, according to the chiefs of those companies.
In 2006, the Towanda Borough Council passed an ordinance which authorized the Towanda Fire Department to bill insurance companies for partial payments for its services when it responds to fires and motor vehicle accidents.
At the council's Dec. 28 meeting, former Towanda Borough Council member Rick Lewis brought to light the fact that the Towanda Fire Department had not received any reimbursements from insurance companies since the ordinance was passed. Lewis said he was bringing up the matter because a number of council members were claiming at the time that they did not know of any way to balance the borough's 2012 budget without imposing a 1-mil increase in the borough's property tax.
Roof said that, ever since the ordinance was passed, it was his responsibility to provide information about the emergencies that the Towanda Fire Company had responded to a company called PA Fire Recovery Service of Allentown. It was PA Fire Recovery's responsibility to decide which incidents were eligible for a payout from an insurance company and then to seek the reimbursement from the appropriate insurance companies. PA Fire Recovery was to receive a 15 percent commission for its services.
"For a time, I was emailing information to the company (PA Fire Recovery)" about the incidents that the Towanda Fire Department had responded to, Roof said. However, he said he was using the wrong email address, so the emails never arrived at PA Fire Recovery Service, he said.
"I wasn't really computer savvy at the time," he said.
Roof said that, because the Towanda Fire Department never received any reimbursements, he assumed that PA Fire Recovery was unsuccessful in its efforts in obtaining them for the fire company.
"I eventually stopped sending them (PA Fire Recovery)" the information about the emergencies, he said.
However, Roof said that Wysox Fire Chief Brett Keeney showed him recently how to get information to PA Fire Recovery Service, and Roof said he now has the correct email address for the company.
Roof said he will resume seeking reimbursements from the insurance companies, but said he would not be able to get reimbursements for incidents that had occurred more than six months in the past.
Roof also told the council members that the payouts from the insurance companies would not have been as big as they might have expected.
He said that, in general, local fire departments have received hardly any reimbursements for the fires the have gone to, a fact that was confirmed in interviews by the chiefs of the North Towanda and Wysox fire companies.
The reimbursements for responding to a house fire is at most $500, North Towanda Fire Chief Terry Sheets said. And Sheets said the North Towanda Fire Department has only been reimbursed for responding to two house fires in the six or seven years that it has been seeking reimbursements from insurance companies.
Wysox Fire Chief Brett Keeney said his department has been reimbursed for only one house fire in the approximately six years that it has applied for insurance payouts.
"If they (Towanda residents) think they're going to get rich from fighting fires, they're wrong," Sheets said.
The Wysox and North Towanda fire chiefs say they are more successful in getting payouts for motor vehicle accidents and doing traffic control for disabled vehicles.
But Roof said the traffic accidents the Towanda Fire Department responds to tend to be fender-benders, which have a much smaller payout from an insurance company compared to some of the serious accidents that occur on highways.
The payout for a fender-bender, if a fire department was successful in obtaining it, would probably be somewhere between $100 and $200, Sheets said.
By contrast, if a fire department received a payout for extricating a person from a vehicle, it would be $1,500, Sheets said.
The total amount of payouts that the North Towanda Fire Department has received each year has been, on average, approximately $5,000, Sheet said.
Over the last three years, the Wysox Fire Department has received $8,000 to $12,000 annually in payouts from insurance companies, Keeney said.
The Towanda Fire Department would probably have collected a lower amount of reimbursements than the Wysox Fire Company, because the Towanda Fire Department had not been doing extrications at motor vehicle accidents, Keeney said. At Towanda Fire Department incidents, the extrications have been done by the North Towanda Fire Department.
The Wysox, North Towanda and Towanda fire departments only seek reimbursements from insurance companies, and never seek reimbursements from individuals, the chiefs of those companies said.
If a person is not covered by insurance, the fire companies do not seek any reimbursement from that person, the chiefs said.
And if an individual's insurance company refuses to make a payment, the fire companies let the matter drop and do not seek the reimbursement from that individual, the chiefs said.
James Loewenstein can be reached at (570) 265-1633; or email: jloewenstein@thedailyreview.com.
___ (c)2012 The Daily Review (Towanda, Pa.) Visit The Daily Review (Towanda,
Pa.) at thedailyreview.com Distributed by MCT Information Services
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