Occidental Volunteer Fire Department Announces Annual Awards

The Occidental (California) Volunteer Fire Department (OVFD) announced their annual firefighter awards. Winners were Michael Schuster, Ron Lunardi, Jim Lucanic, and Bob Rozett.

Occidental, CA (PRWEB) April 26, 2004 --The Occidental Volunteer Fire Department (OVFD) announced their annual firefighter awards. Michael Schuster was named "Firefighter of the Year". Schuster, an Engineer with OVFD, is a power systems technician for AT&T in his civilian life. He is in his eight year with OVFD as a volunteer. His favorite experience was the time he spent with a special Sonoma County strike team formed when much of Sonoma County's fire equipment was out of the county on mutual aid calls to support other fire departments. The strike team raced to every fire in Sonoma County during it's brief life to support the departments whose equipment and manpower had been depleted for the mutual aid.
    
Ron Lunardi received the "Volunteer with the Most Call Responses Award". Lunardi, who spends his non-volunteer time as owner of Lunardi Electric, an electrical contracting business, is the OVFD Fire Chief. During his over 29 years with the department, he has seen the department go through a lot of changes. Years ago, they spent nearly all of their training time, and a lot more, keeping their old fire engines operating. Now, with modern equipment, they spend most of their training time doing actual training and much less on equipment maintenance.
    
Jim Lucanic received the "Most Improved Firefighter of the Year Award". He has been a member of OVFD for a little more than a year. He also works for the California Department of Forestry as a seasonal firefighter. He remembers the huge winter storm in December, 2002. He went on a call at 5 a.m. for a tree down into powerlines. The next thing he knew it was 7 p.m. and 15 calls later. It caused him to miss his girlfriend's birthday which she still reminds him about. The calls went on and on for another day and a half as he and the other firefighters scrambled to keep up. One of the calls was for a "code blue" waking him after only 10 minutes of sleep and was the first time he had to perform CPR. For these actions and others, the department members chose Lucanic as their most improved firefighter.
    
Bob Rozett, with over 12 years in the OVFD, was given the "Rachet Jaw of the Year Award". This good-natured, humorous award is given to the firefighter that, in the opinion of the other firefighters, talks the most on the radio. Of course one of the reasons that he is on the radio a lot is the large number of calls that he responds to. Rozett is a general contractor when he is not volunteering. He is an engineer-emergency medical technician for OVFD with a total of over 24 years of fire service including time spent with the Twin Hills and Graton departments as well as Occidental.
    
Our congratulations and thanks go to these hard working volunteers that spend their time helping to keep our community safe.

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For Media Information:
John Blair - 707-874-2399                                                                                                                
Photographs available:
http://www.jgblairphoto.com/ovfd