Camaraderie, adventure and service Volunteers needed to fight fires, save lives

GRANT COUNTY — With fire season upon the Columbia Basin, many fire districts and departments across Grant County are looking for volunteers to help fight fires and staff emergency medical services, offering free training programs and opportunities to serve their local communities.

Besides the occasional team like the Moses Lake Fire Department, almost all of the county’s fire districts and departments need volunteers to help crew their stations across the 2,791 square miles of Grant County.

Some teams, like Grant County Fire District No. 7 from the Soap Lake area, could take as much as 20 new volunteers and put them into training for a Firefighter 1 certification immediately, said Fire Chief Kirk Sheppard.

“(Volunteers) could expect to assist us with wildfires, structure fires, car fires, motor vehicle accidents, and we will provide them all the training necessary,” Sheppard said.

Sheppard’s district has an average of 400 calls a year, including 125 fires. Like the county’s other fire districts, District No. 7 is large, covering 157 sq. miles of rural and residential areas.

A majority of the calls to District No. 7 and other fire districts in Grant County are Emergency Medical Service (EMS) calls, and interested volunteers can also be put through Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) training during the winter months by District No. 7 and others.

“Our medical call volume includes everything, from people falling down and us picking them up or they have a heart attack and we help them,” Sheppard said.

Though volunteers to some districts like District No. 7 can expect to get into a training program quickly, for some other teams, like with the Ephrata Fire Department, volunteers are still needed but may need to wait to begin training until late-September, said Fire Chief Jeremy Burns.

As a municipal agency, the Ephrata Fire Department works primarily within city limits on structure fires, but volunteers can still expect to get wildfire experience during mutual aid to surrounding districts. Additionally, all districts and departments in the county contribute to the occasional state mobilization, when firefighters from across the region deploy to a large fire requiring concerted efforts to put out, as with the Highway 243 Fire that sparked early June near Wanapum Dam and burned over 20,000 acres.

“There’s a good sense of camaraderie, even beyond your own department, and people find it to be challenging, rewarding and very exciting,” Burns said.

Volunteering as a firefighter is also a great stepping stone to a career position, Burns said. Both Burns and the Ephrata Fire Department’s deputy fire chief started out as volunteers.

But for those who simply want to give back, volunteering is its own reward.

“You’re volunteering to support your whole community,” Sheppard said. “This could be your aunt, your uncle, your mom and dad, your brother or sister, this could be your neighbor, your high school friends. When somebody’s having a fire, that’s the worst time of their life right then, and anything you can do to help stop that, you want to do that for your community.”

Emry Dinman can be reached via email at edinman@columbiabasinherald.com.