The North Plainfield Fire Department consists of twenty-four career members and a volunteer force of seven members.  As with any other agency that depends on volunteer support, we continue to experience a fluctuation in the number of persons willing and capable of serving as volunteer firefighters.  The EMS shift is partially staffed with civilian per diem EMTs and one full time EMT to supplement our career FF/EMTs.  The chart below explains our department structure.

The Fire Chief, Deputy, Staff Captain, Administrative Assistant and civilian EMT work weekday hours, while the remaining Fire Captains and Firefighters work a rotating schedule of day and night shifts.  All department members are listed below:

Fire Chief William F. Eaton
Deputy Chief Lane R. Solon
Administrative Assistant

A-platoon

Captain Bernard Pongratz
FF/EMT Robert Beattie
FF Paul Carlucci
FF/EMT Anthony Torlish
FF/EMT James Reedman

B-Platoon

Captain Allen Smith
FF/EMT Brian Martin
FF Albert LaJeunesse
FF/EMT Joseph Kadel
FF/EMT Steven Dill

 C-Platoon

Captain Mark Ciarlariello
FF/EMT Jeffrey Firling
FF Kevin Miller
FF/EMT Chuck Ferrante
FF/EMT Phil Kika

D-Platoon

Captain Randy Sadlon
FF/EMT Richard Connolly
FF Jeffrey Holtz
FF/EMT Daniel Lawson
FF/EMT James DiPaolo

Civilian EMT Denyel Cusimano

Call force:  Thomas Carlucci, Richard Sloyan, Ronald Kanterman, John Erber, Jeff Meyer, Tom Taillon, Skip Bell and Shane Bell.

Training

All members of the department are required to meet a minimum level of training standards annually. This includes topics such as Right to Know-Haz. Comm. Training, Blood borne pathogens, Hazardous Material refresher, SCBA refresher and many others.  In addition to those topics, which are required by law, all shifts also conduct company drills throughout the month. This works out to approximately 1 to 2 hours of training per tour of duty and includes topics such as ladders, hose, extinguishers, carbon monoxide emergencies, gas & electric emergencies, water rescue and many others.

Platoons also participate in the monthly callmen’s drill on the first Wednesday night of each month. More about this drill is discussed in the Callmen section.

Further, since most of the department’s members are also NJ certified emergency medical technicians, they are required to complete 48 hours worth of continuing education units over a three year period.

There are also about twelve NJ State certified fire inspectors and they too are mandated by law to take classes on a three year cycle. Those ceu classes are necessary to maintain their inspector’s license.

Lastly, there are many specialized classes that the department participates in regularly, either by ourselves, or jointly with our mutual aid fire departments. For example, we have attended the Somerset County Emergency Services Training Center to participate in their new flashover fire simulator.  At the end of this summer some members went to the Delaware River to train in water rescue operations. We have also sent a handful of our members to the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland.