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Why They Serve
America's Firefighters
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72% of America's
firefighters are volunteers |
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Why They Serve - America's Firefighters
by Peter Greenberg
from Parade Magazine
July 5, 2009
When the fire alarm sounds, across America, grocers immediately leave their checkout lanes, architects put down their pencils, plumbers drop their wrenches, chefs hand over their cooking chores, and telephone repairmen leave the lines cut. Our nation's volunteer firefighters are always prepared to serve.
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Of the estimated 1.15 million firefighters in the U.S., 72% are volunteers. Their departments can be found in small towns and large cities, in isolated areas of Alaska and New Mexico, on Indian reservations, even abroad. Since March 2008, 10 volunteer firefighters from New York State have helped to lead the fire department at Camp Phoenix in Afghanistan. More than 20,000 of the nation's 30,200 fire departments are all-volunteer. In Massachusetts alone, there are about 120 fire departments made up entirely of volunteers. In fact, most small and midsize communities in the U.S. rely primarily on volunteer firefighters.
There are departments located completely underground, their stations mined out of the side of a mountain (Creede, Colo.), others staffed by high school students (Aniak, Alaska), and others, such as the department in Dover, Del., that work solely to protect state capitals. Yet all share one thing in common: They are central to the American community, and in many towns, they are the community.
The volunteer fire department is often the first line of defense in times of emergency. When Continental Flight 3407 crashed short of the runway near Buffalo, N.Y., in February, killing 50, the first responders were the 64 members of the Clarence Center Volunteer Fire Company.
These days, volunteer fire service can sometimes mean making do with a barely equipped firehouse on a limited budget or having the local car dealer pitch in to fix broken equipment. But it doesn't mean using untrained staff. Most volunteer fire departments require the same standards of their members as paid municipal firefighters. The volunteers train in CPR, hazardous materials, communications, and advanced firefighting techniques. The work also is no less dangerous: Of the 118 firefighters who died in the line of duty in 2007, 68 were volunteers.
On Fire Island National Seashore, a 32-mile-long strip of beach 50 miles east of New York City, most of the fire trucks are specially converted four-wheel-drive vehicles. "Out here, when you turn 18, you join the volunteer department," says Ed Horton, 52, a building contractor who has been a member of the Ocean Bay Park Fire Department for more than 30 years and currently serves as fire commissioner. "It's just the way it is."
For Horton, the fire department is all about community and family. His grandfather helped found it in 1950, his father was a chief, his mom served as fire commissioner, his brother Michael is the current chief, and his youngest daughter just joined. "There's this feeling that because we're on an island and we're volunteers, that we're untrained," Horton says. "But it's not true. We're subject to the same rules and regulations as mainland departments. You do this job because it's part of your family, part of your community."
The Ocean Bay Park Fire Department consists of a 1957 Willys Jeep fire truck and three other vehicles. Two are 1000-gallons-per-minute pumpers, which carry more than 1000 feet of hose--nearly enough to reach across Fire Island, from bay to ocean. With limited water on the island, it's not unusual for the firefighters to pump seawater from the south bay to fight a blaze. In winter, there are few fires. But in the summer, when the population on Fire Island explodes from several hundred year-round residents to more than 50,000 people, the department can be extremely busy.
In fact, at many resort and vacation destinations, volunteer fire departments are nothing less than lifelines. Take the small Alaskan community of Skagway. In the high summer season, the population doubles to about 1600. That would be tough enough on the small department, which was created during the Gold Rush of 1898. But on most days, there can be as many as six cruise ships that pull into Skagway's tiny harbor, instantly expanding the population to around 16,000 and making the Skagway volunteers stay on duty for at least eight hours a day. Fighting fires? No--mostly providing EMT services and racing sick cruise-ship passengers to hospitals 200 miles away.
And then there are the "Dragon Slayers," volunteer firefighters in the remote town of Aniak, Alaska. The entire department: four adults, including a schoolteacher and bush pilot, and nine high school students. Their equipment: one ambulance and an aging 1976 pumper truck in need of repair. Aniak is isolated. There are no roads to any other village in Alaska, and Anchorage is 350 miles away. "We struggle a lot, but somehow we make it work," says Fire Chief Pete Brown, 64, a retired fishing guide. This year, the Aniak fire department expects to handle at least 300 alarms--a huge number for a town of 600 residents.
No matter where NBC News anchor Brian Williams goes on assignment, the first place he stops is the local volunteer firehouse. "If you want to know what's going on in town, that's where you need to be," says Williams, who joined the Middletown Township, N.J., fire department as a volunteer at 18. "The volunteers know their town, because they are their town. It's all about community."
"I never had any thoughts of becoming a firefighter," says Mary Hauprich, 45, a writer and mother of two from New York. But three years after moving to Islesboro, a small enclave (pop. 600) off the coast of Lincolnville Beach, Maine, she was approached by its volunteer firefighters. "They heard I was a writer, and they said they just needed someone to take notes at their meetings," she recalls. "I said I would. And the next thing I knew, I had signed on. As it developed, I never took a single note!
"It uncovered a passion I didn't know was there," she says. Before long, Hauprich was learning about all the pumps, how to attack an interior fire, and how to fix a fire truck. Currently, there are 21 members in the department (her husband Brian, a former chef, also volunteers as an EMT) and only four vehicles. "For six years, I was the only woman in the department, but I recruited another," she says proudly. "She manages a nearby farm." Hauprich's 15-year-old son is now a captain of Islesboro's junior firefighters program.
Recruiting is a worrisome issue for many volunteer fire departments. "It's a real problem," Brian Williams says. "We need to find more people willing to serve."
In some departments, membership levels are dropping to--pun intended--alarming levels. "We need folks to support their volunteer fire departments," Williams adds. "They're the guys who come when you call, and they truly are the backbone of America."
Author and travel expert Peter Greenberg has been a volunteer firefighter since he was 18.
http://www.parade.com/news/2009/07/05-why-they-serve.html |
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