 When
Jennifer Young was growing up, she liked to spend time at the Waldorf
Volunteer Fire Department with her dad, a volunteer firefighter. Young
is certain that her passion for the high-adrenalin life of firefighting
and the pull to help others started then. Now age 34 and assistant fire
chief of the Newburg Volunteer Rescue Squad and Fire Department, she is
one of hundreds of volunteer firefighters who protect and save lives
throughout Southern Maryland.
Today, as they have for many decades, Charles, St. Mary's and Calvert
counties all rely on volunteer firefighters and most of their Emergency
Medical Services (EMS) providers are volunteers as well. Charles County
is the only Southern Maryland community that pays some of its Basic Life
Support (BLS) providers and Advanced Life Support (ALS) providers, also
called paramedics.
Locally, many volunteer firefighters are career firefighters and come
from families with several generations of firefighters-a longtime
tradition in bucolic America. Others work in the law enforcement,
healthcare or EMS fields, but some are blue- and white-collar
professionals with no previous link to rescue work. Regardless, these
men and women routinely put their lives on the line for others and are
the "first responders" to fires, car accidents and life-threatening
emergencies in the tri-county region. Firefighting is a profession that
is dominated by the understanding that failure by a first-due company (a
dispatched department that would be closest to an emergency) to answer a
call, what is known as a "scratch," is never the goal.
"When you have the opportunity to talk to somebody and you tell them
it's 100 percent volunteer-that every piece of emergency apparatus that
you see on the streets is manned 100 percent by volunteers-I don't think
a lot of people really realize or appreciate that," observes Jim
Richardson, the fire, rescue and EMS coordinator for Calvert County.
(Richardson is also a volunteer paramedic with the countywide Calvert
Advanced Life Support medic unit.)
In understanding what drives volunteer firefighters, stories of familial
ties surface over and over. Andy Bell of St. Mary's County is proof of
that. Bell's now-deceased father was a volunteer firefighter and his
three brothers, a nephew and son are also volunteers. Bell works at the
Leonardtown-based, family-founded Bell Motor Company and has been a
volunteer firefighter for 25 years. He is currently assistant chief of
the Leonardtown Volunteer Fire Department and St. Mary's County's
volunteer fire chief. He thinks one of the biggest challenges is finding
volunteers to run calls during the day, when most people are at work.
Volunteer firefighters throughout the tri-county region, including those
housed at the busiest fire station on Old Washington Road in Waldorf,
respond to a range of emergency calls, such as house fires, barn fires,
commercial fire alarms, water rescues, fallen trees, downed wires,
dumpster fires and reported gas leaks. They work closely with their EMS
colleagues and are routinely dispatched to crashes, including those that
require extrication tools to free trapped victims, and calls that are
emotionally draining, such as suicides at the Harry Nice Memorial
Bridge.
In Charles County alone, there were more than 11,600 responses by fire
department units in Fiscal Year 2006 (July 1-June 30)- a significant
increase over 8,886 fire responses in 1998, less than a decade ago. In
2006, there were 3,811 dispatched fire calls in St. Mary's County and
2,275 in 1998. In Calvert County in 2006, there were 3,108 dispatched
fire calls, compared to 2,850 in 1998. (Annual statistics from Calvert
and St. Mary's are based on calendar years and differ from how Charles
County keeps and reports its statistics.)
Southern Maryland's overall population is projected to be around 379,950
by 2015, according to Maryland Department of Planning data provided by
the Charles County Economic Development Commission. Yet while it's
likely that the number of emergencies annually will rise as this area
continues to grow, many are hopeful that, at least for the foreseeable
future, the volunteer system will continue to evolve and be able to meet
new demands.
For example, more than 30 new members joined the La Plata Volunteer Fire
Department in the last five to six years, says Matt Posey, a volunteer
firefighter and lieutenant. The LPVFD, started in the 1920s, is the
oldest fire department in Charles, and remains an example of how strong
community mindedness is here.
There are more than 1,300 fire and EMS volunteers in Charles County,
more than 875 in St. Mary's and more than 800 in Calvert. (Volunteer
classifications are not broken out separately because there are a number
of firefighters who are also Emergency Medical Technicians or EMTs, for
instance.)
To fight a fire, volunteers have prior certification or go through at
least 120 hours of training at the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute (MFRI)
regional training center in La Plata. Training is free, but rigors
include working in hot smoky environments or maze training, which
requires crawling through tight spots or locating doors and windows.
These kinds of experiences help prepare them for the future. Since Young
began her volunteer firefighting career in 1989 at the Bel Alton
firehouse, she has responded to countless potential tragedies, including
one in which a couple and their dog were rescued from their burning home
and survived. "If you pull up and see fire, everything else goes away
and you're there to do your job," she says, adding that the rewards of
being a firefighter far outweigh the risks. (Young is also a paid
emergency room technician at Southern Maryland Hospital Center and a
volunteer EMT with Newburg's rescue squad.)
Monty Parks agrees. He is chief of St. Leonard Volunteer Fire and
Rescue, chairman of the chief's council in Calvert, and has been a
volunteer firefighter for 23 years. He says that volunteers do what they
do because they like helping people and there is an esprit de corps that
even the stress associated with volunteer service-dealing with
fatalities (members are required to attend debriefings in these
instances), missing family time and sleep, carrying heavy equipment and
wearing heavy gear-can't squelch. Park's son Christopher, a high school
sophomore, will join St. Leonard this year and Parks is noticeably
proud. (Parental permission is required for anyone under 18 to become a
firefighter.)
Likewise, Young and her husband (also a volunteer firefighter) both
expect that the thrill of climbing up on a fire engine will translate
into a calling for their now 2-year-old son in the same way it sparked
Young's interest years ago.
But ensuring a next generation of volunteers isn't a guarantee. That's
why volunteer recruitment and retention have become perennial issues in
Southern Maryland, leading to incentives such as daycare funding,
scholarships, and Length of Service Award Programs (LOSAP) through which
volunteers who are 60 or older, and have more than 25 years of service,
can receive monthly stipends.
Fire and EMS services in Charles and St. Mary's counties are supported
through taxes that are based on property values. Calvert relies solely
on county funding and non-profit support. But fire departments in all
three counties have historically relied on supplemental ladies auxiliary
fundraising and community donations. For instance, St. Leonard's Ladies
Auxiliary recently provided $15,000 to help cover the department's
administrative costs and $15,000 toward the final payment on its heavy
duty squad vehicle.
"We're your first line of defense and we are prepared and we prepare
every single day to meet the challenges [we may face]," says Duane
Svites, the volunteer fire chief for Charles and a volunteer with
Hughesville Volunteer Fire and EMS Department. The threat of natural
disasters, terrorism and Charles County's growth have spurred ongoing
analyses and system improvements, points out Svites, who is also deputy
chief state fire marshal for the southern region.
There is no question that incidents such as the La Plata tornado in 2002
and harrowing storms and hurricanes provide real-time, and
wide-reaching, examples of the important responsibilities that
firefighters take on. But safety in the new millennium in America since
September 11 also means ensuring strong communication between
jurisdictions, working toward seamless interoperability, and keeping
pace with technology, say Svites and Tony Rose, chief of fire, EMS and
911 communications for Charles County.
In the past few years, Charles has focused intently on its emergency
services system. It built a new 911 center, put in a new 800-megahertz
radio system that allows for communication with other counties through
mutual-aid channels, and utilizes geographic information systems (GIS)
mapping and global positioning system (GPS) technology to pinpoint
accident sites and locate victims.
"The emergency field in general has a lot of redundancy built in
automatically," explains Rose. "We've stacked the deck in favor of the
victim."
Rose's observation resonates on a rainy Thursday at Charles County's 911
headquarters and communications center in La Plata. Inside is a virtual
panorama of color, screens and blips. A large map shows a clustered area
of the locations of recent emergency calls. Dispatchers sit calmly,
during their 12-hour shifts, in front of multiple computers that relay
different bits of information, such as details on a victim or emergency,
available talk channels to communicate with rescue workers, and the
closest companies and units that should be dispatched to a call.
It is an afternoon of routine business-firefighters sent to car
accidents, a bulldozer fire and a gas leak-but right now a dispatcher is
calling for a fire engine to secure a landing site in Waldorf so a
Maryland State Police helicopter can land to pick up a man who amputated
his thumb with a table saw and take him to Union Memorial Hospital's
hand center. And while this request by a dispatcher isn't one that calls
for fighting a raging fire, the volunteers on the other end of the radio
know that a crisis could literally be just around the corner. |
