What's a tiny volunteer fire company in Bensalem doing with a $1 million taxpayer-funded fireboat tricked out to troll the Delaware River for blazes, bodies, terrorists, and IEDs?
Nothing, besides preening for festival crowds and crashing into objects seen and unseen.
The tale of how the dysfunctional Union Fire Company won a wad of Homeland Security money to buy a state-of-the-art terror-taming boat screams post-9/11 planning at its nuttiest.
The volunteers' bold play to dabble in regional law enforcement has soured relations with Bensalem's paid police department. Two Union chiefs have resigned as a result of boat acrimony and embarrassing accidents. And just maintaining the vessel is draining the fire company's meager resources.
Bensalem locals talk endlessly about the imposing 40-foot, 25,000-pound "Bear on the Delaware" that has been prowling all year but has yet to fight a fire or sniff out a bomb. But no one who had a hand in the grant seems upset that volunteers own a dream machine that may be the death of the company.
Union members insist they "aren't yahoos," but rather, everyday heroes risking their lives for free. Yet even the chief admits they look like showboaters on the big-boy toy.
With fewer than 30 active members - only a handful of whom even live in Bensalem - Union already "scratches," or fails to respond to, nearly a third of its emergency calls. When they make rare marine runs, it's usually to recover bodies. Until this year, the firefighters took off in a modest motorboat to guffaws at a nearby yacht club.
"They're horrible. It's like a comedy of errors when they launch," says Bill Burke, the club's former commodore. "I've seen them put a boat in without the plug in."
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