December 23, 1992

White River fireman hangs up his hat

       When Bob Wehrman joined the White River Township Volunteer Fire Department in 1962, the 23 firefighters lacked their own fire engine, so they had to equip a Dodge pickup to serve as their fire truck. Now, the 76-member department has several fire trucks.  In his 30 years as a volunteer firefighter, Wehrman has seen the department grow, but he is hanging up his fireman’s hat and retiring from the department.  “When you go out and help someone with their pain, stress or agony, it’s rewarding when you come back,” Wehrman said.  Wehrman, 51, lives in White River Township and works a regular job manufacturing human insulin at Eli Lilly & Co. in Indianapolis.  But firefighting has been his favorite preoccupation.  It began in the late 1950s, when Wehrman joined his brother Richard on fire runs for the Wayne Township Volunteer Fire Department in Indianapolis. After moving to Johnson County, Bob Wehrman took some training classes and joined the White River department.  “Back then it was the community — everybody knew everybody and helped each other out,” Wehrman said. “Now it’s grown, big-city-type.”  In 1962, the department was funded by the township trustee, and its total budget was a mere $1,200.  Unable to afford a real fire truck, the White River firefighters installed their fire equipment onto a 1961 Dodge pickup truck themselves, he said.  The department had only two air- packs — portable oxygen tanks with masks that allow firefighters to breathe while surrounded by thick smoke — which are considered standard equipment for all firefighters today.  “When we started up years ago, the training then compared to today was nonexistent,” Wehrman said. “Thank God there’s more emphasis (now) on safety for firefighters.”  In 30 years, Wehrman has fought some huge blazes. One of his most memorable occurred several years ago at a former asphalt plant near State Road 37. Two 5,000-gallon tanks of fuel that powered the plant had caught fire.  “I could see the glow for miles,” he said. It took three fire departments — White River, Greenwood and Bargersville — to extinguish the blaze, which caused $1 million damage.  But in all his years of firefighting, Wehrman has escaped serious injury. “I’ve been sent to the hospital a few times for smoke Inhalation,” he said.  His worst injury occurred not in a fire, but once when he rode to the hospital in an ambulance with a cardiac- arrest patient. The ambulance collided with another car. Two of Wehrman’s ribs were broken and he received 16 stitches.  When he entered a building full of flames, Wehrman was not deterred by possible injury or death.  “You’re not thinking of that,” he said. “When you go in, you’re going in with another firefighter; you’re going in as a team. You go in there, get to the base of the fire and put it out.”  Thick smoke in a rapidly-burning building makes it difficult to see inside, so firefighters stay close to their fire hose — their way out of the building if the fire becomes too dangerous. “That’s your life support,” Wehrman said.  White River Township in 1962 was mostly rural farmland, and the department was called to emergencies just 82 times that year, Wehrman said.  That changed with the township’s housing boom — and resulting population explosion — of the 1970s and 1980s. “We used to say we got more new additions than some towns got streets in a year,” he said.  The department is now called to emergencies several hundred times a year.  When he served as assistant chief and chief in the 1970s, Wehrman helped plan ahead to obtain new equipment for the township’s fire needs. But the volunteer department wasn’t able to afford most of the trucks and equipment it needed until the White River Fire Protection District was formed in 1986, which provided a new source of tax revenue.  Firefighters and emergency medical technicians regularly encounter people who are seriously injured, or who have lost a family member or all their possessions in fires. “It takes a special type of person to go in and fight a fire,” Wehrman said. “You have to be professional. You can’t let yourself get emotionally involved,” he said. “That’s one reason I’m getting out of it,” he said. “Thirty years of living it, seeing it — it’s time to let the young ones take it.”  Wehrman was honored by the department earlier this month for his years of service. But he won’t be giving up firefighting completely.  He’ll still serve as a fire scene investigator on an on-call basis, determining whether blazes were caused by accident or arson.  “It’s an interesting occupation, it’s fun,” Wehrman said of firefighting. “The firefighters are a family. You look out for each other.”  (Reprinted with permission from the Daily Journal)

  
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