Sep 11, 2015 2 min read

The checks Rice Energy was donating Friday to area firefighters and other first responder organizations was a big one, but one of the company’s own employees had firsthand understanding of its significance.

As a former officer in first responder organizations in Washington County for 20 years, Rice Energy’s Michael Lauderbaugh, its vice president of environmental health and safety, ?had good reason to introduce his company’s annual donation event Friday at its Southpointe headquarters.

Speaking before several hundred representatives from 36 area first responder organizations who were about to receive a portion of nearly $617,000, Lauderbaugh told them he knew well their sleepless nights and the constant fund-raising projects – car washes, cash bashes and bingo – they participate in to keep their fire departments at the ready.

“The trucks – the engines and pumpers, new ones – are $500,000 unequipped,” Lauderbaugh said. “A ladder truck is $850,000 to $1 million.”

To outfit a firefighter with the latest protective clothing and safety equipment, he added, is around $5,000.

“So if you have 10 to 20 active members, that’s a lot of money they have to come up with,” he said.

Rice, which drills for natural gas in Washington and Greene counties as well as Belmont County in Ohio, passed out a total of 36 checks to first responders in its business area.

The amounts ranged from $4,150 to $32,500, with 16 organizations receiving $22,500, and another 14 receiving $10,500 each.

The three largest checks, at $32,500 apiece, went to the public safety departments in Washington and Greene counties and Belmont County Emergency Management Agency.

Company spokeswoman Kim Price said the money, which is collected by Rice’s 360 employees from the company’s various contractors and vendors, is a central part of its annual “Marcellus Mania,” a four-year-old picnic and celebration each August, which this year drew 4,300 people to the Washington County Fairgrounds.

“The donations we provide to the local first responders affords these organizations the ability to upgrade their equipment and improve the general well-being and safety of the communities where we do business,” said Rice President and Chief Operating Officer Toby Rice.

Pennsylvania Fire Commissioner Tim Solobay, who attended Friday’s event, said the annual check presentation to first responders “is a great example of a corporation in the natural gas industry that helps folks who may have to deal with an emergency at one of their facilities.”