The death of Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company paramedic Erik Steciak Tuesday was the first in Harford County Fire and EMS Service since 1999.
Capt. Steciak, who lived in Columbia and was a captain with the West Friendship Volunteer Fire Company of Sykesville, died while responding to a call for an accident patient on Patterson Mill Road in the Emmorton – Bel Air South area, not far from the Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company's Patterson Mill Station, where Capt. Steciak was a paid paramedic.
His death also appears to be the first in Harford County of a paid employee of a fire company. A few local volunteer companies, Bel Air being one, have employed paid EMS staff in recent years because the high volume of emergency medical response calls in their service areas. The Harford Volunteer Fire & Ambulance Service also has a separate foundation that provides ambulance/EMS service and whose paramedics are paid.
The last line-of-duty death in Harford's Fire and EMS Service occurred in December 1999 when Roy Crago, of the Fallston Volunteer Fire Company, died at a hospital three days after a fire engine he was driving to a fire crashed into a ditch. He had suffered a heart attack while driving, according to news reports of the incident.
According to records compiled by the Harford County Department of Emergency Services for the memorial wall erected with the department's new headquarters, nine line-of-duty deaths were recorded in the fire and EMS service prior to Capt. Steciak's on Tuesday.
The DES headquarters and wall were dedicated on Nov. 10, 2014. The wall also contains the names of police personnel who died in the line of duty.
In addition to the deaths of Capt. Steciak and Mr. Crago, the other eight Fire and EMS Service deaths recorded in Harford County are:
Charles W. Clark, 50, Aberdeen Fire Department, March 8, 1958;
George Curlett Jr., 47, Aberdeen Fire Department, Oct. 1, 1966;
Marion Bill Armstrong, 54, Susquehanna Hose Company, June 2, 1972;
James F. Alexander, 44, Aberdeen Fire Department, April 7, 1971;
Harry E. Hopkins Jr., 50, Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company, Jan. 3, 1974;
Calvin Cornes, 72, Joppa-Magnolia Volunteer Fire Company, Sept, 21, 1986;
Thomas Weeks, 32, Level Volunteer Fire Company, Aug. 25, 1990;
Thomas E. Hicks, Norrisville Volunteer Fire Company, Dec. 17, 1990.
Allan Vought