It has come to the Department's attention that Lower Swatara Township residents recently received fund drive donation requests in the mail from the Middletown Fire Department. This has created some confusion as the Lower Swatara Volunteer Fire Department is the primary service provider for Lower Swatara Township. The Middletown Fire Department proactively reached out to us to explain that these requests were sent out in error by the company contracted to coordinate their annual fund drive. Rather than only send the letters to residents of Middletown and Royalton Boroughs (the primary response area of the Middletown Fire Department), the letters were accidentally sent to all residents in the 17057 zip code. This includes residents in Lower Swatara and Londonderry Townships. The Middletown Fire Department is actively working with both their contracted company as well as Lower Swatara Fire Department and Londonderry Fire Company to rectify this issue and ensure any donations received from Lower Swatara or Londonderry Township residents are properly routed to those departments, respectively.

Lower Swatara Volunteer Fire Department will be sending out our annual fund drive letter shortly to residents of Lower Swatara Township. Like Middletown and many other all volunteer departments, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly hampered our ability to raise funds in our traditional manners, such as weekly bingo and hall rentals. Despite this, our operations did not stop or scale back in 2020 as we continue to experience our average call volume. The support of our community for our 100% volunteer operation is needed now more than ever. The Lower Swatara Volunteer Fire Department, along with our Mutual Aid partners in our surrounding municipalities, greatly appreciates the support we receive in our attempts to provide high quality emergency services to our community.