Become a Volunteer Firefighter
The volunteer fire and emergency medical services is a challenging, exciting and rewarding experience, conveniently condensed into one package. It also offers several viable options which you can pursue as a volunteer or in a career position.
If you volunteer, you can pursue a degree and expand your horizon to a career status, if you so choose. Very few things can be a vocation and avocation at the same time, but you have that option as a firefighter.
In Morgan County, as in most areas of the country, you can be fully trained and state certified at no expense to you. There is no difference in certification between career and volunteer firefighter. The same goes for volunteer emergency medical services. Obviously, there are specialties that are branches of emergency services, such as arson investigation, fire inspector, and fire official. Emergency medical services specialties can expand to include Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) and related specialties. However, FIRE and EMS are often combined into one operation.
Volunteer emergency services are a grassroots operation. For hundreds of years, volunteer firefighters did what they had to do to provide services. When they needed something, they had a bake sale or a homemade fund raiser of some sort within the community to get the funding. It was this very thing that made them so visible, respected, and so much appreciated in the community.
Where do these volunteers come from? They come from your community. They vary in age and they are both men and women.
It is likely that the average person in your community doesn’t know that volunteers are indeed providing their emergency fire and medical services. Volunteer firefighters influence outcomes that directly affect people’s lives by responding at a moment’s notice, whether it is day or night, to put that fire out, to rescue that person in harm’s way, or sometimes just to give the assurance that, in fact, nothing is wrong. In 75% of the communities in this country, volunteers provide the only organized forceto do this work.
Volunteering allows us to give something back to our communities. Today, there are many demands on our time, and firefighting or emergency services require specialized training in addition to the presence of a warm body. There are probably tens of reasons not to volunteer. However, if you have a sense of civic pride, if you want to see immediate results of a job well done, if you have the heart and spirit to make your community a better place, consider volunteering with Morgan County Fire Department. You may find meaning previously lacking in your work and your life, and you may also find a career.
For more information on how to become a volunteer firefighter, call 706-343-6503, or email MCFD@morganga.org.