BY BRIAN TANNEHILL

Volunteer at Wetumpka Fire Department

Two firefighters, one a rookie and one an experienced chief, practice a transitional attack, knocking down the fire from the outside, then transitioning inside the door to extinguish the seat of the fire.

Volunteer Fire Departments face struggles with low budgets, decreased manpower, and increased calls. They respond to everything from house fires, wrecks, woods fires, medical calls, and disasters such as the latest storms that ravaged our areas. There are very real dangers involved. Lots of training hours go into learning the many aspects of the job.

Recently a house was made available for some local fire departments to use for training in a real-world setting. The house originally belonged to Mrs. Inez Waites who was a local school teacher at Sewell Memorial in Titus. She lived to be 106. The property is currently owned by the Selby family. They generously donated the house for the training.

Three local Elmore county volunteer fire departments gathered Saturday morning, Nov. 14, to train. They included Buyck, Titus, and Santuck Fire Departments, with a few members from other departments as well. The house was used for well over a month for different scenarios such as search and rescue and ventilation before being burned for the live fire exercise.

To be able to train like this is great. There are a lot of regulations in effect now from environmental considerations to safety, that make this real-world training harder and more expensive to conduct. Firefighters are able to get hands on experience in fire behavior, in a controlled training environment, with great instruction.

Nationwide there are approximately 1,115,000 career and volunteer firefighters according to a National Fire Protection Agency report from 2018. Of that 745,000 (67%) were volunteer, and 370,000 (33%) were career firefighters. The volunteer numbers have steadily decreased since the 1980s.

Closer to home, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency statistics, 79 percent of Alabama fire departments are volunteer, 7.8 percent are career, and 13.2 percent are a combination of Career/Volunteer. In Elmore county we have 20 Fire departments. Three are combination career/volunteer departments, and 17 are all volunteer departments.

Please help support your local Volunteer Fire departments. Most in the area meet on Tuesday or Thursday nights, and are always looking for more people to join. They have a limited budget and have rules on what they can and cannot purchase. So, when you see that crawfish boil or Boston butt sale, or any fundraiser for a local volunteer department, please support your local volunteer agencies.

It truly can make a difference, and possibly allow departments to purchase much-needed equipment, or offer better training for the volunteers. Those pieces of equipment, and the men and women who step up to serve, could very well save your life, or the life of someone you love one day. If you are interested in becoming a volunteer for your local fire department, please know it isn’t just firefighting. There are a multitude of jobs that go into departments, that most of us never think about until they are needed.

See more photos below.