The Merritt Island Volunteer Fire Department has endured a lot of changes over the course of its history, and now that we are entering into its 54th year of service we felt it was time to put together this section to give everyone an idea of where we have been and where we are now. Hopefully you will find this not only entertaining but an informative piece that chronicles the development of Merritt Island and how we fought fires over all these years.
It all started back in February 1951 when several area citrus farmers got together and came up with a plan to develop a system that would bring other farmers together when needed to fight not only brush/woods fires but structure fires as well. The farmers used a large siren, which several of you old timers might remember as the old Civil Defense sirens, to notify others of the need to respond to the station. The first station we used, Station 1, was a 2 story metal building on SR 520. Station 2 (now BCFR 42), Station 3 (now BCFR 41) and Station 4 (now BCFR 40) were built in the early 1960’s. The apparatus we used as engines were old jeep trucks or a tractor that had a 300 gallon water tank on the back and a simple pump. We had four of these units available to respond, with over 200 members in the department at that time. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s we built larger 1000 gallon brush trucks to fight fires, and it wasn’t until 1958 when we first bought fire engines with the first one being a 1958 Ford with a 500 gpm LaFrance pump. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s additional engines were purchased to expand the department, some of which can be viewed in our picture section of this site. We gave names to the different apparatus to make it easier to know who was being called on the radio, and our dispatch unit was called Mother Hen. Some of the different names given to the engines were: Phoenix, Big Ugly, Vulcan, Squirt, Dry Run, Dixie, Bull, and Roadrunner.
The department is probably best known for it’s chicken fry’s we conducted out of our Station 1 on SR 520. It started out as fish fry’s until the fish began to get harder to catch so we switched to chickens and this became an extremely large draw. We had people from all over the state come to Merritt Island for the chicken fry, which was conducted on the 3rd Sunday of every month. At the height of the chicken fry’s we served over 5000 chickens per day along with cole slaw and beans. We even developed a patch that was used as the official department patch during this period which had a chicken on it (you can also see this in the picture section). It was a very common occurrence to see cars lined up as far as you can see for this monthly event. I will have to say that most of the old timers still in the department that were here during that period find it hard to eat chicken even to this day, and cringe at the thought of doing similar fund raisers today.
We have evolved over the years and now have a single engine to cover 4 primary stations on Merritt Island, in conjunction with a paid/career department. It is a 2002 Pierce Quantum pumper with a multitude of equipment on it. It has a 6kW light tower, a cascade system for air-fills, Hurst extrication equipment, high and low pressure air bags, multiple saws, and a complement of other hand tools and appliances. We have approximately 15 active members within the department and several other support personnel. We also respond to cover any other area within the 72 mile long stretch of Brevard County for mutual aid such as brush fires, large commercial structure fires, and the like. We have enjoyed a long tenure of firefighting and look forward to the next 50 years.