Drew Perkins Photography: Working portraits

Part of the ‘working portraits’ series – Volunteer Firefighter

The following is an excerpt of an email to five questions about life as a volunteer firefighter.

As a volunteer firefighter, what is the level of expectation considering you have a day job?

In addition to working a day job, working as a volunteer firefighter consists of being on call 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. Although there is a choice to respond or not, it is hard not to respond to the call when you know that either someone’s life is in jeopardy, there has been a car accident, or a fire is in progress. Inevitably, some calls come at the most inopportune times – like when you have everyone over for Christmas dinner and you have just sat down to eat!

What happens if you get a call in the middle of a weeknight – how does it affect your day job?

I have responded to calls that last quite a long time through the night and have had to work at my real job (the one that pays the bills) in the morning. Although my real work is my priority, I have an understanding with my employer that should I have to respond to a call on my way to work, or a call lasts a while and goes into my normal work day that I will make up the time lost at the end of the day etc. It doesn’t happen too often, but they are good about. The worst calls are the ones that wake you out of a dead sleep in the middle of the night. I feel the worst the next day if a call comes in between 3-4 am. The next day at work is a long one. But, it is amazing how fast you can spring out of bed, get to the hall, and respond to some emergency within several minutes out of a dead sleep.

How much time do you commit to volunteer firefighting per month?

Given the rural nature of our hall, we receive the fewest calls out of the five halls in _______. Even so, I probably on average spend between 10 – 20 hours a month either training or responding to calls. We have mandatory monthly training (and several additional training events throughout the year) that keeps all of our skills current, and ensures that we meet all the municipal firefighter standards. This training gives us what we need to respond to a wide range of calls – medicals, motor vehicle accidents, fires and a whole range of other calls in between. Because we are rural, we are almost always the first ones on the scene, usually having to deal with whatever medical situation for about 10 minutes or more before paramedics arrive. After having taken CPR and first aid courses since I was a teen and never having to use the training, I really enjoy putting all the training we do into practice on a regular basis.

How does it feel to be a volunteer firefighter within your local community?

I enjoy being an active member of our local community, and have gotten to know a lot of local people through the fire department since I joined 5 years ago. Living locally can be difficult sometimes though, because every so often you have to respond to a call that involves someone you may know fairly well.

Do you have any heart warming stories you would like to share?

The majority of the calls aren’t all that heart warming considering that when someone decides to call 911 it is usually as a result of something fairly serious. But I always get a kick out of the call in the middle of the night where some old girl is having difficulty breathing or having chest pains in bed, and five firefighters walk into her bedroom and she still has enough sense of humour to say that if she had only know that calling 911 would get 5 young guys into her bedroom within a few minutes of calling that she would have started calling more often a long time ago.