Wagner Rotary met on Wednesday, March 24th with the ringing of the bell and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Rotarian Bill Heerman offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for the day and asked for guidance for all Rotarians to reach out to the community.

Since we were to have a longer program for the day we moved right into the Sergeant at Arms and her fines:

$2 to Linda Soukup again for using her daughter’s maiden name in the Rotary minutes and another $2 for leaving bottles and cleaning supplies in the kitchen. A Happy Fine for $5 came from Patty Frei for her daughter making the Dean’s list at SDSU.

Secretary/Treasurer Patty Frei reported that we had a total attendance of 17 members plus two guests who were Kara Frei from Lavender Lane and Jason Von Eschen who would be the program. The Queen of Hearts has risen to a total of $542.00 and everyone watched closely as Rotarian Scott McAdaragh drew a Queen of Diamonds. S/T Frei gave a report on Rotary grants that are available currently and none of them meet the criteria that Rotary has planned for Wagner Lake.

Jamie Soukup was Program Chairman; and since he recently joined the WFD he introduced Jason Von Eschen who is currently the Fire Chief of the Wagner Fire Department. He researched records at the FD building in preparation for this program that dated back to 1915. The Wagner Fire Department was established on August 14,1907. The department had two trucks at that time one of which was a “hand crank” and the truck could pump out 250 gallons per minute. In 1926 they upgraded to its first self-ignition Model T Ford truck. The FD currently has nine vehicles all of which can carry and pump water. They also have one rescue vehicle which is used for emergencies.

The department was first housed in a City building and he ran across an interesting fact concerning citizens who ran over fire hoses would be fined a large amount! The department moved into a building by the American Legion in 1948 and in 1982 they moved to the old high school by the City Park and were housed in the old shop and FFA portion which is currently the Boys and Girls Club location. A new building was built on the west edge of Wagner in 1997 and another addition in 1998 was added for the ambulance.

The Wagner Fire District includes the town of Dante, the City of Wagner, and includes the rural farmers in a 270 square mile district. The area farmers worked to outfit a truck and helps outfit fireman with necessary equipment. In the early days of the rural department patrons were taxed $150 and this assessment ended in 1991-1992.

The current department consists of 25 members and they are all volunteers. The only additional help is JoAnn Mazourek who acts as a secretary and treasurer and Audrey Petrik who cleans the building on occasions. Firemen go through numerous training sessions Fire Fighting I and Fire Fighting II. They spend about 80 to 100 hours in training in various locations and for their finals they are taken to a live practical fire in a contained situation to experience going into a burning structure. Von Eschen was asked if there were any women volunteers and he said not in Wagner, but Dante has women who are fire fighters.

The Fire District has an annual budget of $75 to $76,000.00 per year which includes their capital outlay. They do fund raising events during the year, the biggest of which is the Figure 8 races on Labor Day Weekend. It is necessary to raise extra funds as the cost of outfitting one new fireman runs about $12,000 per man!

Jason is the current Fire Chief which is a two-year term, and he will be leaving his post in about two weeks at their annual meeting on April 10th. Mike Kezena will be the new Fire Chief.

He was asked how they deal with emergencies and tragedies. Von Eschen replied that after a stressful event the fireman will visit afterwards and debrief themselves. If the event is extremely challenging, they will call in counselors who will conduct debriefing sessions for them. The Wagner Hospital staff also helps with these sessions. They have had three sessions in the last two years as the Wagner Community has had some incredibly sad events in the recent years.

The department receives on an average of 60 to 70 calls per year. The most calls were in 2012 when the drought was very severe in South Dakota. That year a total of 120 fire calls came in. In the past year of 2020 there were 59 fire calls. He also stated that they do not have their own Scuba Diving Rescue Team, but the State does, and they can request assistance from them.