One of Sterling's most tragic fires occurred on April 5, 1946 when five children were burned to death in a house owned by the Woodring family on Redemption Rock Trail. The department was summonsed to the fire and responded quickly but due to the distant proximity to the center of town, they were not able to arrive in time to rescue the children that perished inside.
By 1938 several large capacity water holes had been built in the center of town, installed under the NIRA for use as public water supply. Included with this system were 27 hydrants scattered throughout the center of town and this combined with the larger booster tanks built on the newer apparatus helped with the water problems that continuously troubled the department. Also during the late 1930's radio technology was beginning develop within the town departments. In 1937 Cliff Rugg began working with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in experimenting with radios for use in civil defense. The first radio acquired for the town was a receiver that Cliff mounted in one of the Municipal Light Department trucks for emergency use during power outages. By 1940, Cliff added a transmitter to go with this receiver and by the end of the year had installed a second transmitter/receiver unit in another Light Department truck. In 1941 Cliff built a radio tower on his garage and the DNR built him a base transmitter which he began to use occasionally for both the Fire Department and Light Department activities. Cliff experimented with this technology for several years before anyone began to take his ideas seriously, but finally in 1947 when the DNR. radio network changed from AM to FM, he had gained enough support to get the town to invest $3500.00 to upgrade the town's radio equipment. Once the upgrade was complete, Sterling became licensed to operate a base station on frequency 31.340 MHz using the call sign "WBPP". Soon after this a radio was installed on Engine 3 which made Sterling one of the first departments in the area capable of communicating direct from the scene of a fire to the base station without the use of telephone. As Sterling continued to to use the DNR radio network for the Light Department, Fire Department and Forest Warden activities, other towns slowly began join on the network as well. On July 19, 1949 Sterling re-licensed, changing the call sign changed from WBPP to KCA364 and continued to operate as such up until March 22, 1958 when Sterling moved its Fire Department radio operations onto the Mid State radio network, operating on 33.700 MHz under the call sign of KCE537. Sterling was one of the first towns to use this channel and continued to use it along with the DNR network which remained in use by the local Forest Wardens up until 1974. By the early 1950's, firefighters were being issued home radio receivers, some of which were built by Cliff from military surplus equipment. With the capability to talk directly to firefighters via the radio, Cliff and his wife Helen inevitably became Sterling's first Fire Department Dispatchers. Using the telephones and radio equipment set up in their living room, they would receive and dispatch calls for the Fire and Police Departments for almost 50 years. from the Sterling MA FD website --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "massfire" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/massfire?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
