Sue Gormly stood outside her father’s house on Mitchell’s Lane on Monday morning, surrounded by sweeping fields, and complained of the lack of fire hydrants in the immediate vicinity.
Gormly questioned what her family would do if her father’s barn were to catch fire and the Middletown Fire Department’s tanker truck wasn’t available to respond “because they don’t have the manpower to use it,” she said.
The Middletown Fire Department has the smallest shift size on Aquidneck Island. Each shift has five firefighters, a shift captain and a civilian dispatcher, but one firefighter is often off on vacation time, out sick or otherwise unavailable, and so it’s often four firefighters on duty; the department has 27 firefighters plus the chief, The Daily News reported previously.