Hawthorne Crosby Firefighter of the Year

The gala Crosby Volunteer Fire Dept. Awards Banquet was held in Landry’s Restaurant this year. Above right

KEMAH – The Crosby Volunteer Fire Dept. held their annual Awards Banquet last Saturday with special recognition for service, time with the department and leadership.

Within 2012, the local firefighters ran 837 calls for service of those building fire accounted for 92 calls, 36 of those calls were inside the Crosby District. A total of 129 of the calls were for motor vehicle accidents. The department is recovering from their most active year on record in 2011 where there were 964 calls. That year they were called out of district to deal with wildfires in distant counties.

Although they are a volunteer service they had even more accomplishments. The yearly average response time was 10.5 minutes from the time the call is received until arrival at the call. Within the month of December the average response time was reduced to 8.1 minutes.

According to Chief Alan Kulak, “There were no injuries to speak of last year, our number one goal is to stay safe.”

There were several 10 year recognitions this year Chris Reed, Jacque Barbonne, J.D. Giles and Mike Sims were presented with the awards. Chief Kulak was presented an award for over 30 years of service that was a fireman’s helmet in bronze. Shawn Robinson and James Brown were awarded recognition for 15 years of service.