By ERIC SEIVERLING
The Stockdale Fire Department’s ability to help the community and Mon Valley residents is on display this week.
And its firefighters don’t even have to leave the station.
On Monday, the fire department’s social hall on Railroad Street was the site for an appointment-only COVID-19 vaccination clinic hosted by Monongahela Valley Hospital.
The social hall will also be the site for more appointment-only clinics scheduled this week.
According to MVH media specialist Andrew Bilinsky, the fire department approached the hospital about using the space for the clinic.
“When we were gathering information to do a clinic, they offered it to us,” Bilinsky said. “The timeline was good for what we wanted to do. The pieces just fell into place.”
Stockdale fire Chief Tom Wilkinson said the idea to host the clinic stemmed from when the department’s firefighters received their vaccines at the hospital recently.
“We thought about the crowds at the hospital and where our fire department is located with our big parking lot,” Wilkinson said. “We told the hospital ‘The social hall is yours,’ and they took us up on it.”
Bilinsky said approximately 380 people received shots Monday. People were invited to the clinic from the thousands of names from the hospital’s vaccine telephone hotline and its online registration form as well as Washington County’s vaccination website.
“We probably have 1,100 emails,” Bilinsky said. “We have easily quite a few thousand on our digital online form … probably 15,000 names. And our hotline we’re pulling from daily.”
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