New Year's Eve

31 December 2003

    This new years eve was a busy night for Sugarloaf Fire Rescue. Three calls in one night. the First call came in around 9:30, 9:45 P.M. The call was about a smell of smoke in upper Sugarloaf Key, up by Mangrove Mama's. Arriving at the Scene was Chief Mike Bowden, Jim DiTomaso with tanker-10, Chris Boveda along with Gary Falkenstein with engine-10, and John Parken. They looked for the source, discovered and reported to the Sheriff's Office an unsecured building, but could could find no source of the smoke other than from several small campfires at the Sugarloaf KOA, which had apparently accumulated due to the calm evening.

    The second call came in around 10:30, 11:00 P.M. The call was the report of a motor vehicle accident with a car in the mangroves at MM17 (which puts it right in front of the Sugarloaf Fire Station.) Arriving at the reported scene was Chief Mike Bowden, Squad-10, Rescue-11, the on-duty County Battalion Chief, and most of the SLVFD Members. A thorough search along both sides of the road was conducted for more than a mile in both directions, but no vehicle or evidence of a recent accident was found. It was determined that the report was unfounded.

   The last call came in around 2:50 A.M., making it technically the first call of the New Year. This call was the report of a fire at a residence on Cudjoe Key. En route were Tanker-10, Chief-10, and Engine-10 from SLVFD and Engine-11 from the Cudjoe Substation. Engine-11 was first on scene and the crew quickly extinguished what turned out to be a small trash can fire and cancelled all other units en route.

                           Written By: Chris Boveda