The Oswego Town Volunteer Fire Department is sounding the alarm: They’re done serving the SUNY Oswego campus.

After years of repeated fire alarm activations at the school — many of them coming during overnight hours and almost all of them false — fire department officials recently passed a resolution to redraw the district they service.

Now, an April 9 public hearing during a Town of Oswego Board meeting could help decide who responds to calls at the state university. Board members will vote on the resolution after the public hearing, and if it passes, the town will let other groups bid to take over the area around the campus.

“It’s just an extreme number of alarms going off,” Town of Oswego Fire Commissioner Robert Lighthall said. “We have to be concerned about our constituents in the town and make sure we’re protecting everybody.”

Lighthall said the department has received 69 calls from the campus so far this year. That’s an increase from the first quarter of last year, which he says saw 56 calls. The department has responded to as many as six alarms in one night, and some calls include multiple alarms going off in the same building. The usual triggers: burnt food, smoking and vaping.

This has led some volunteers — most of whom work day jobs — to turn off their pagers overnight in hopes of a good night’s sleep, Lighthall said. That means fewer people available to respond to actual emergencies, though Lighthall said the town is still well covered at this point and the department has only been late to one call this year.

The department’s main concern, however, is the impact on membership. At least two firefighters who worked in the department for more than 10 years quit because of the number of calls, Lighthall said, and others have left for unclear reasons.

“We’re not at risk right now, but we can see the trend developing that we need to get ahead of the curve and address it before we do have a shortage,” Lighthall said.

The fire department is now looking for a significant reduction in the number of calls through education and disciplining those who trigger alarms, Lighthall said. He also pointed to measures other SUNY campuses have implemented like prohibiting aerosol spray in dorms and restricting hair applicants to bathrooms.

A SUNY Oswego spokesperson declined to make any campus leaders available, but offered a statement that reads, "We are finalizing a plan that we believe will reduce calls to the fire department while maintaining safety on our campus. We look forward to presenting that plan in the coming weeks."

It’s unclear if any school officials will be at the April 9 hearing, or when that plan will be presented.

Lighthall said the fire department has a good relationship with SUNY Oswego. First-year President Peter Nwosu, in particular, has looked at the issue seriously, Lighthall said. That’s a contrast, he says, from previous years when the department saw little response from the school after bringing up the issue.

The town fire department has covered the campus since 2013. At that time, they received fewer than 200 calls per year from SUNY Oswego, Lighthall said. In recent years, that number has ballooned to more than 300.

Grant Atkinson, a freshman at SUNY Oswego, said the fire alarms in his dorm — Oneida Hall — have gone off at least 10 times this school year. Now, with firefighters turning pagers off and uncertainty surrounding who will be responding to the school, Atkinson is concerned for on-campus safety.

“Every second counts when it comes to actual fires in buildings,” Atkinson said. “And I’m afraid one of these days there’s gonna be a real fire and it’s gonna cost somebody’s life.”