How to Become a Volunteer Firefighter
Communities all across the United States are in need of people to join their local Volunteer Fire Department. A critical service, yet expensive to fund full time staffing, volunteer fire departments are experiencing a huge shortage of members. It seems as though volunteering for a fire department has become less popular nationwide. Forgotten though are the benefits of joining a volunteer fire department. With today’s changing society and culture, we have forgotten the value of community service and helping your neighbors. We tend to want to connect to people on social media from all around the world, but forget that we have wonderful people living right next door.
(more…)
This episode is a follow up of the blog post “
In Episode 008, we welcome Capt. Dave “Red” McElroy to the show. He is the Training Captain for the Barnstead, NH Fire Department. Capt. McElroy started his fire service career in York, ME in 1983 and has since served on a number of other departments throughout New Hampshire. He has kept in contact with us in York since he moved on, and is still one of our greatest friends. Red brings solutions to common issues throughout the volunteer, on call and combination fire service in this episode. We also had the opportunity to answer another question from a fan of the show.
Today we had a great dialogue with our first guest for the podcast. Lt. Nick Hamel from the South Berwick, ME Fire Department sat down with Nick and Paul to discuss what makes the SBFD tick. Listen to Lt. Hamel’s thoughts on training schedules, department leadership and management. We also dove deep in to keeping the senior firefighter engaged with training.
There are many fire departments out there that are in a slow coverage area, which means less fires than a busier department. When we have less fires and less serious calls, it can be very easy for us to lose our sense of clarity when we respond and work at these incidents when they do happen. It is critical that we all know how to develop and maintain a clear mindset when we are faced with a challenging and stressful situation. In this podcast Nick goes over the four steps to developing a clear mindset.
Episode 005 is another solo episode with Nick. This quick message gives some insight on how to deal with haters and negativity that you may be exposed to.