Jonah Cohen, 59, Volunteer Firefighter and Skinny Santa VOLUNTEER Jonah Cohen in a truck lent to his department in Queens. JONAH COHEN, 59, the senior member of the West Hamilton Beach Volunteer Fire and Ambulance Corps in southern Queens, sat in the back of an ambulance parked in his firehouse and tore open a military-style instant meal. "Spaghetti and meat sauce," he said, eating with a spoon. Mr. Cohen, who is thin and gaunt from the post-storm madness, could use some fattening up. Christmas is coming, and he has been the department's Santa for more than 30 years. "I own my own Santa costume - how many Jews can say that?" he said. If Mr. Cohen is not your typical firefighter, the West Hamilton Beach squad is not your typical department. For one thing, its fleet consists of that one ambulance. Hurricane Sandy's floodwaters swallowed up the other vehicles: two fire trucks, two ambulances and a chief's car. This has left the department unable to protect its neighborhood: a small section of single-family homes that rub up against the western boundary of Kennedy International Airport. It is a low-lying area on Jamaica Bay, which last week was still without power in many places. That one ambulance survived because firefighters parked it a mile inland before the abrupt arrival of the storm surge, which prevented Mr. Cohen and most of his colleagues from getting anywhere near the flooded firehouse during the storm. The few members who made it put on dry-suits and used a dinghy to evacuate a woman, her mother and a dog, among other adventures. The place ran on generators for a time, but now with power restored, it has become a relief center where storm victims pick up donated food and clothing. Mr. Cohen has worked seven days a week since the hurricane hit, doing relief work. After eating, he dropped his slight frame into a comparatively big office chair in the warm dispatch office and let the relaxing sound of emergency radio calls lull him into a nap. "People think it's all fun and games when you're the boss - it ain't," he murmured as his eyelids drooped shut. Just resting my eyes. I hear everything you say. Minutes later, rejuvenated, he reported that the damage to the fleet represented a loss of maybe half a million dollars. Mr. Cohen, as president of the department's corporate board, handles the finances. As titles go, he prefers "former chief," or even - as the embroidered title on his black quilted Fire Department jacket maintains - Chief Cohen. In the parking lot, he pointed out the ruined fire trucks with the squad's "Beach Bulldogs" logo: rigs that were perfect for squeezing through these canal-lined streets; rigs that were driven to ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001; vehicles that went to the Rockaways for the Flight 587 jet crash; and others that traveled to Long Island for the Avianca crash. "That one, I have no idea why we went," Mr. Cohen said. These guys are crazy. The good news is that two donated fire trucks and an ambulance just came in from out-of-state departments that learned of the Queens department's loss. How did he end up in this firehouse? "Funny story," Mr. Cohen said. He grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, and, while attending yeshiva, he noticed a pamphlet for Paul Smith's College in the Adirondacks, which offered a program in forestry. What seemed like a leafy escape from a nonleafy upbringing ended with a bang. "When I was up there, a friend of mine blew his head off with a shotgun because he was going to get drafted for Vietnam," Mr. Cohen said. I found him in his room, and - not that I could have saved him - but it got me to join the college fire and ambulance department. After two years of college, Mr. Cohen moved back to Brooklyn and took medical classes at Long Island University. He worked in an emergency room before joining the Lindenwood Volunteer Ambulance Corps and eventually the West Hamilton Beach department in 1980. "I was the only one who wasn't Irish," he said. There were many more fires to fight back then, he said. "This fire-safety stuff really caught on," he said, sounding disappointed. Mr. Cohen lost his job as a hospital administrator five years ago and now lives off savings. A bachelor, he still lives in his childhood home in East New York, a seven-minute drive from the firehouse. The West Hamilton department, which dates to 1928, has roughly 30 members. It monitors the city's local emergency line to get a jump on calls in Howard Beach and areas east, assisting the local city company on Cross Bay Boulevard. In the firehouse on Thursday, storm aid still took over much of the rescue operation. The base of the fire pole was cluttered with boxes of serving dishes. The pole? I've never even used it," Mr. Cohen said. That kind of stuff doesn't thrill me. E-mail: character@nytimes.com