The tiny station where I volunteer

[u/MostBoringStan]

I mentioned it in another post and somebody asked to see it, so here it is.

Big enough for our 2 trucks, our gear, a couple tiny washrooms, office for the chief, and a table for our meetings. If the entire crew shows up for a meeting, there isn't much more room.

We have about 10 volunteers, and cover an area with a radius of about 50km. Even with that large of an area, we only get maybe 10 calls in a year, and the last year was even slower with only 7.

There are a lot of posts with nice shiny trucks in front of nice big stations, so I thought I'd share what the other side of the spectrum is like.

[u/Mountain_Frog_]

Wow. Thank you for sharing. I am guessing that y'all only do home response? Do y'all do interior or just hit it hard from the yard each time? What is the mutual aid situation like there? Is EMS handled by a separate system. What are the minimum certification requirements for full members?

My old station had 15-20 thousand calls a year, so this type of department is fascinating to me.

[u/MostBoringStan → u/Mountain_Frog_]

"I am guessing that y'all only do home response?"

Yes, it's all home response. Everybody in the crew lives at most a 3 min drive from the station, so for something serious, people show up quickly. For not serious stuff, we are lucky to get 2-3 people. I show up for everything I can, though.

"Do y'all do interior or just hit it hard from the yard each time?"

We don't do any interior. We haven't had any structure fires since I've joined, but none of us are trained for interior.

"What is the mutual aid situation like there? Is EMS handled by a separate system."

We have an ambulance station in town, and they handle all medical stuff. We only have our first aid certification.

"What are the minimum certification requirements for full members?"

None. Basically, once you sign up and get your gear, you can go on calls. We are down to only one member (the chief) who is actually fully certified. It's been a point of contention between the chief and the province, because they want us certified FF1 but since we are all volunteers, we can't just take time off work and travel 6 hours away while paying for gas/food/hotel to get trained and certified. The chief has been fighting with them for a year to pay a trainer to come here and do it.

We do our own in-house training to get some experience working with the equipment, but it's definitely not the same thing, so I am hoping we can get the proper training this year.

So due to the lack of certification and the very low number of calls, I don't see myself as a real firefighter. I'm just somebody who is trying to help my community.

[u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 → u/MostBoringStan]

The town wants training, they need to pay for training.

[u/MostBoringStan → u/Mediocre_Daikon6935]

There has actually been progress on that since I made this post. Next month, the province is going to fund everything for any of us who are available to go for training. It will be nice to get some proper training and have better knowledge of what to do when I'm on a scene.