Harmony Volunteer Fire Company History

The Harmony Volunteer Fire Company was organized in 1874 and the records are unclear who the men where and how many started the company. The first chief was elected in 1913 and was in that position for the next 19 years. Additionally, the first hand pulled hose cart was purchased that same year. The company originally served Harmony Borough and the outlying areas. Then in the early thirty’s the company formed an agreement with Lancaster Twp and Jackson Twp to cover the two townships. The company was incorporated in 1933 and was owned solely by its members.

The company’s first motorized apparatus was a 1933 Diamond Te with a piston driven pump. Many of the fire trucks the company owned in the early years were built by the members of the company. Some examples are a 1957 GMC panel truck converted into a rescue truck, a gasoline tanker that was converted to haul water, and a Jeep that was modified to be a brush response vehicle. This continued until the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) standards got to a point where the company had to purchase apparatus from approved manufactures.

In the late 60s the company started an ambulance service. It originally had 3 members who attend the first EMT training program in the state. In 1972 the company bought its first ambulance using funds from a grant and vehicle loan. Members of the Zelienople Fire Department did a door-to-door fund drive to help the Harmony Volunteer Fire Company pay off that loan. In 1991 the ambulance service split from the fire company and became Harmony EMS, a separate organization.

The company began in a long-gone building on Main Street. The bell out of the tower in that building is in front of the present Station 22. Around the 1930s the company moved to Doc Stewart Hall at the corner of Main and Mercer streets. A pole building was built on the site of the first station or where the Sid Bream building sits today. This pole building originally stored the carnival equipment for the yearly fund raising carnivals that the company previously hosted. In the seventies the company stopped hosting a carnival and put fire apparatus in that building due to the increasing size of modern apparatus. In 1986 the company built the truck bays that house the HFD’s apparatus today and in 1994 a meeting room was added to the present day station.