Five members of the Cornell community have started not only a new academic year, but new community service responsibilities as residential "bunkers" with the Ithaca Fire Department (IFD), responding to fires and other emergencies in the city and town of Ithaca. After successfully completing an intensive, two-week basic-training program in August, three students and two employees are now providing emergency service duty as IFD bunkers, joining nine others from Cornell who are veteran bunkers.

Under contract with the city of Ithaca, bunkers commit to providing approximately 100 hours of emergency response service each month, according to an established duty schedule. They provide support for the department's career staff, and they earn housing without charge in an Ithaca Fire Department station in exchange for their service.

Students and staff from Cornell make up almost half of the participants in the 30-member program. Others are students at Ithaca College, Tompkins Cortland Community College, Corning Community College or are non-student members of Ithaca's volunteer fire companies. The new bunkers from Cornell are students Michael Contorno, Paul Hahn and Christopher Wright, and Alice Henshaw, a Cornell Outdoor Education instructor, and Steven Wehrspann, senior safety specialist in the Department of Environmental Health and Safety.

"Bunkers are an important element of the department's initial response force and of our overall community protection program," said IFD Volunteer Coordinator Marcia Lynch. "During the past year, bunkers' service placed an average of eight additional volunteers on duty each night, helping to protect the city and town of Ithaca, including the university."

Cornell serves as a primary community partner for this program, facilitating recruitment of prospective members on campus and sponsoring the annual picnic to celebrate the end of the basic-training program. This year's bunker-training picnic was Aug. 29.

For information on becoming a residential bunker or as a volunteer firefighter, write or see Marcia Lynch at the Ithaca Fire Department's Central Station, 310 W. Green St., call her at 272-1234.