SEPTEMBER 24, 2009 ISSUE
Heroes Among Us
Volunteer Firefighters in Watuaga and Avery Counties
Look around you, and you’re likely to come into contact with a volunteer firefighter. At the Beech Mountain Volunteer Fire Department, members include an electrical engineer, a doctor, a Lees-McRae College administrator, a contractor, a real estate agent, a retired accountant and a retired Bellsouth manager.
One Beech Mountain volunteer, Riley Hatch, has simultaneously served as the Town of Beech Mountain Public Works director, the greens keeper at the Beech Mountain Club, a police officer and a firefighter and is EMT certified. In fact, several Beech Mountain Club staff members are volunteer firefighters.
“One member answers calls on his golf cart,” Jim said.
For volunteers in leadership roles, like Chief Wayne in Banner Elk, it’s like having two full-time jobs. Wayne spends 60 to 70 hours per week as a contractor and about 25 hours per week as fire chief.
“It is a 24-hour job,” he said.
Modern firefighting isn’t what it used to be, and it isn’t what you think it is. Nowadays, firefighters are more likely to be using the Jaws of Life in a vehicle accident than dousing a house fire or rescuing a cat from a tree.
“The technology has advanced, and our equipment has gotten much better,” Wayne said. “It’s a changing business. It changes day to day, year to year.”
Fire Departments Today
Because of increased fire prevention education and improved technology, local fire departments are battling fewer fires than ever, but that doesn’t mean firefighters aren’t feeling the heat.
From car accidents to training to property inspections, their workload continues to increase. Firemen today more frequently act as first responders—now officially called medical responders—in addition to educating the public about fire safety and prevention.
“We’ve had one [life] save this year,” said Doug Berry, Stewart Simmons Volunteer Fire Department chief. “Most of our [life-saving] is through prevention.”
All of the departments in the county do a lot of fire prevention activities, agreed Mike Shook, Foscoe Volunteer Fire Department chief.
“We go to the schools, go to Bible schools [and] talk to people on the street,” Mike said.
Education topics include teaching kids to stop, drop and roll, what to do when you see a fire, how to get out of a burning building and the importance of a meeting place in case of fire.
Fire departments are also required to do fire inspections, which can be quite time consuming. Between commercial properties, condos and rentals, Beech Mountain is responsible for inspecting about 1,000 sites per year, said Jim Brooks, chief at Beech Mountain Volunteer Fire Department and a firefighter since 1971.
“We do home inspections for safety and fire prevention, check the number of detectors [in the home], make sure extinguishers are in the right location at the right height [and] make recommendations,” Doug said.
Fire departments encourage homeowners to reduce the amount of fuels—potentially flammable materials—around the home and “make it more possible for us to protect their property,” Doug said.
Most of the calls to which fire departments respond today are actually medical calls, unrelated to fires, and because of their locations throughout rural communities, fire personnel are often the first to reach the scene.
“We’re the closest people to get to what’s going on,” Jim said.
Wayne Miller, chief at Banner Elk Volunteer Fire Department, said of the 600 calls the Banner Elk department received in 2008, he would estimate that about 60 percent were medical calls.
“For every fire call, we [at Stewart Simmons] run five medical calls,” Doug said.
And, said Junior Sluder, a Newland fire veteran of more than 40 years, firefighters also get called in for anything from a bag of trash in the road to traffic control.
As with structure fires, local departments are battling fewer forest fires.
Wayne said his department has only responded to two “full forest fires” in his 12 years of service. Banner Elk responds to about 15 to 20 small brush fires per year, which are usually extinguished in a matter of minutes.
“We’ve been lucky,” Mike said. “We haven’t had any [forest fires] over here in a while. We have [sent guys to] other places in the county, [but we’ve] never been called out of county.”
Two firefighters at Stewart Simmons have their “red cards,” meaning they are certified to go fight forest fires out West if the need arises.
Signing up to take the test for a red card is advised only “if someone is in a point in their lives where they can get called today and leave for three weeks,” Doug said, adding that there is an annual recertification process.
The loss of firefighters’ and emergency workers’ lives in the 9/11 tragedy reminded the world of the risks involved in these fields, and it also resulted in a slew of increased regulations by federal and state governments.
“When 9/11 came, it woke people up to how dangerous this sport can be,” Jim said.
After 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, where “agencies couldn’t interact,” the government put NIMS (National Incident Management System) in place “so everyone has the same standards and can integrate effectively,” Doug said.
NIMS had been in place before but had not been enforced. Everyone on a fire department’s roster must meet the federal requirement of 40 training hours per year now or the station will lose its federal funding. The logic is “tie it to their money and they’ll do it,” Doug said.
When Junior got started in firefighting in the 1960s, “it was very much on-the-job training back then,” he said. Several years later, when Jim joined the fire service, firefighters completed about 42 hours of training.
Nowadays, the basic certifications of N.C. Firefighter 1 and II require completion of 35 classes totaling 402 hours.
Because fire departments are frequently the first to respond to medical crises, many firefighters also become EMTs and paramedics. And although one Beech Mountain volunteer was a retired nurse, she had to take a total of 800 hours of training, Jim said.
“What we do in the field is totally different from the hospital,” he said.
Another major concern for departments today is fire ratings. The ISO (Insurance Services Office) ratings given to fire departments directly determine the amount that residents and business owners in that area will pay for fire insurance.
The lower the ISO rating, the lower the premium, because most insurance companies use the ISO ratings, according to www.forestvillefire.org/info/insurance.
“We’re the only organization in the county that saves taxpayers money,” Junior said.
According to isomitigation.com, ISO collects information about public fire protection, flood risk and the adoption and enforcement of building codes in individual communities.
ISO ratings are from class 1 to class 10 and are conducted on a points system. A class 1 rating is the best and is typically found within a big city department’s jurisdiction, said David C. Vance, Avery County fire marshal and emergency management coordinator.
“City departments have paid firemen, a pressurized water system and fire hydrants,” David said. “We depend on volunteers and use water shuttles to haul water.”
A class 10 rating means there is no fire protection at all or that the area is outside a fire district, he added.
Boone, Blowing Rock and Seven Devils are municipal departments, with both paid and volunteer staff, and these towns meet ISO ratings of classes 5 and 6, according to Watauga County’s website.
“Most [local] departments are so rural, they have a higher insurance classification,” David said.
Linville and Newland have split ratings, meaning they boast a lower rating within the town limits, but a class 9 rating just outside the town limits, he said. Lowering ratings involves a lot of work, time, paperwork and equipment, and the N.C. State Fire Marshal’s Office is the rating bureau, he added.
The association has been working on lowering ratings for about five years, beginning with automatic aid agreements, David said.
Automatic aid involves a primary department and two secondary departments responding to a structure fire, Jim said. “It used to be called mutual aid,” he said, explaining that with mutual aid, the nearest department would “call a neighbor” if help was needed, whereas automatic aid means three departments automatically respond.
Automatic aid is good for lowering ISO ratings, but it also means that departments are responding to more calls than ever.
Pumps, ladders, turnout gear and other equipment are required to be tested annually. Engines must be serviced once a year, and firefighters’ air packs must be tested twice a year.
“It’s amazing how much money we spend trying to do that,” Jim said. His district could earn more credits toward lower ISO ratings if they inspected all fire hydrants twice a year, but they only have enough time to check them once.
All local departments operate within districts that levy a fire tax. Monies generated from this tax stay in the county. In the past, volunteer fire departments largely relied on fundraising to provide money for fire trucks and equipment, and neighboring departments—such as Newland and Crossnore—often competed for funding.
“Crossnore was our enemy,” remembered Junior. “It was a problem.” Prior to the mid-‘70s, fire departments raised money selling toothbrushes and—to the chagrin of public officials—holding “girly shows.” Around 1975, the fire departments promised the Avery County Commissioners they would never hold another girly show if the commissioners would levy a countywide fire tax.
“We were the first in North Carolina to have a countywide fire tax,” Junior said. “That was our salvation.”
When Doug began volunteering at Stewart Simmons 16 years ago, its budget was $28,000, and insurance on its trucks and facility alone cost more than $30,000 annually, he said. At that time, fundraising was crucial to make up the deficit.
“We were one of the last departments to get a fire tax,” Doug said, adding that today, the tax money makes up 90 percent of the station’s budget.
“We’re not dependent on fundraisers anymore,” he said. “We might do a couple fundraisers this year [if] the budget’s tight, [but] it’s still a part of a lot of departments’ funding. Shawneehaw still does regular fundraisers…a barbeque or pig pickin’ two or three times a year.”
Although firefighting has changed significantly over the years, volunteers still rescue the occasional cat in distress. Bob Garland, volunteer with the Avery Ladder Company in Linville, said his department has been called to retrieve a parrot from a tree. The bird would fly to the tree, and every afternoon around 3:00 p.m., like clockwork, sound its mating call, Bob said.
“It was as green as the tree was,” he said.
Hometown Heroes
Volunteer firefighters undertake their cause for various reasons. For Newland’s Junior Sluder, age 75, it was to prevent tragedy from striking again.
In early January 1961, a fire struck the town of Newland, which didn’t have a fire department at the time. By the time departments from other area towns could respond, the blaze had spread to more than 10 businesses, devastating the town’s commercial district. The disaster inspired Newland citizens to band together, and in March 1962, the fire department formed with 17 volunteers, and Junior was elected as the first fire chief. Junior volunteered with the department for 40 years before leaving and returning a couple of times. He continues to serve area fire departments as president of the Avery County Firefighters Association.
The firefighters in Watauga and Avery counties embody the full spectrum of personalities, but all share a deep concern for the wellbeing of those in the community.
“It’s my way to actually give back to a community that has given me so much,” said Angie Miller, who started volunteering in 1989, at age 18, for the Blowing Rock Fire Department. Angie works full-time as assistant director of Appalachian State University’s Human Resource Services and is involved with firefighting duties two to four days per week.
“[Firefighting is] something I love to do,” said Eric Kaczmarczyk, a 19-year-old Foscoe volunteer. “It makes me feel better that I help people.”
Eric, who currently works 39 hours each week at Shook Construction, began volunteering at age 15. Many of his high school friends joined different fire departments around Watauga County, including Cove Creek and Deep Gap, at about the same time, he said.
The adrenaline rush and excitement of firefighting is an essential part of the job for some volunteers.
“We thrive on fighting fire, but when we don’t have fires, morale goes [down],” Junior said.
Firefighters may joke around at the station, tease the young guys and chew tobacco during down time, but as soon as a call comes in, the family-like unit converts into an effective taskforce.
“[We had] a call last night at three o’clock [and we] were there [for] 30 minutes,” Eric said. “Sometimes we’re there for hours [for a single call].”
Deep Gap Volunteer Fire Department’s Matt Clark started as a junior firefighter at age 12.
“When I was two or three, I watched Backdraft [and] ever since then, I’ve wanted to be around fire departments,” Matt said. “I moved up to North Carolina from Illinois and heard some kids at school talking about being volunteers with Deep Gap.” This November will mark six years for the 18-year-old.
“It’s the best thing in the world to know you’re doing something you love and helping people out [and] saving lives,” Matt said.
For a lot of volunteers, firefighting is a family trade. Matt’s mother is on the ladies’ auxiliary at Deep Gap. Bob Garland of the Avery County Ladder Company in Linville followed his father into the fire service, serving 45 years. Angie and her husband are one of two couples serving at Blowing Rock, and their 21-year-old son recently joined as well. Blowing Rock also has a father and daughter who volunteer. In Banner Elk, Chief Wayne Miller’s wife is the treasurer and the head of the auxiliary, and his oldest daughter is also on the auxiliary.
“Firefighting is a longstanding tradition that is family based,” Wayne said. “Fathers, grandfathers, sons usually follow each other into the department. And then, of course, every member in the department is family.”
Welcoming families to the fire department is important in retaining volunteers, said Kent Graham, emergency services director in Blowing Rock.
“If you go head-to-head with family time, you’re going to lose,” he said. “We try to integrate it. We have some elements that are family-friendly.”
Blowing Rock’s new fire station—completed in 2008—has a gym, kitchen, TV room and a family room with couches and a play area for children. Firefighters’ family members often utilize the common area spaces.
Unfortunately, however, it’s becoming more difficult for departments to recruit new volunteers.
“Volunteerism is going to the prunes,” said Jim. “It is really hard to get volunteers.”
The increased time commitment and required training hours have made firefighting less attractive to potential volunteers. At one time, Beech Mountain boasted one of the youngest groups of volunteers, Jim said, but now the average age is around 60. Foscoe used to have a waiting list to be a volunteer, but no longer.
To complete various firefighter certifications, volunteers must travel for training courses. The firefighters’ associations work to provide as many training courses as possible in the High Country, but one local volunteer said he had to travel to locations across the state—including Southern Pines, Gaston County and Wake County—to complete his coursework. In budget crunches of recent years, the state has looked at charging volunteers fees for training courses, but for now, the classes remain free through community colleges, Jim said.
Additionally, new standards imposed by the state have made it more difficult for fire departments to continue junior firefighter programs, and many departments have done away with the program altogether, accepting only volunteers ages 18 and above. The regulations now dictate that juniors must be at least 14 years old to join, they are not allowed in the fire zone and they are not allowed to respond to calls at all until age 16.
“Before they made it tough to have the junior program, I was able to get most of my Firefighter I and II certifications and EMT Basic as a junior [in high school],” Matt said. “I could go to the scene [of] a car wreck [and] I could still watch, but [I was] kept at a distance or at the car. They’d explain what they were doing [and] why they were doing it.” He completed 872 hours of training his last year as a junior, he said, adding that he turned 18 this February and has completed a total of about 5,000 hours.
Not too long ago, volunteers were responsible for purchasing their own turnout gear—a full set will run about $2,000 today—and medical kits, but now departments furnish that equipment, which must be replaced every few years. Some departments recently started paying volunteers a stipend of a few dollars per call (based on certification level).
“Hopefully it meets…their out-of-pocket expense,” said Doug at Stewart Simmons, where volunteers receive $10 for attending training or fire or medical calls. Elsewhere, however, volunteers are responsible for their own fuel costs. Volunteers can also pay about $20 a month into a pension fund to receive $168 a month after 20 years of service at the minimum age of 55, Jim said.
That’s not very much compensation for the amount of time, effort and risks involved, but that doesn’t deter volunteers like Keith Cook, 50, who has served 32 years with Fall Creek in Avery County. In addition to his full-time job as a building inspector in Watauga, he puts in three or four hours a week on average with the fire department. He said he has thought about hanging it up for a couple of years, but he figures he’ll stay on for at least two or three more.
Keith typically operates the pumper when called to a structure fire, and as he recalls, firefighting in mountain winters can be particularly challenging. While firefighters typically have to be mindful of the heat, the cold can be a factor, too. Keith remembers one incident that was “aggravating more than anything else.”
“It was the middle of winter, a little after midnight, and we got the call for a house fire,” he said. “The temperature was in the single digits. Everything you touched that was wet, you stuck to because it was frozen. Our pumps froze up, and we had a hard time moving water.” When the volunteers removed their gear that morning, it was frozen solid.
Fire departments couldn’t function without a crew of volunteers like Keith, but these days, many rural departments have at least one paid staff member. In Banner Elk, the paid, full-time staff member handles day-to-day operations, checks equipment on a daily basis and runs calls during the day, Wayne said.
“That’s a big plus for a volunteer fire department with as much medical calls as we run,” Wayne said. “That has just been a huge, huge asset for every department in the county.”
Some chiefs feel that because of increased training hours, the state is pressuring volunteer departments to convert into paid departments.
“The way the state is mandating things [and] putting pressure on us, I think they’re trying to push for paid departments,” Mike said. Wayne said with the ever-increasing workload, it’s likely to happen in the future.
“It gets harder and harder for a volunteer department to keep up with all of the information that has to be dealt with,” he said. “Soon, just about all of the departments… in Avery County will likely be a fully paid department.”
But most chiefs believe that paid departments would not be feasible.
“What it would cost the county for departments to be paid, there’s no way the county could afford that,” Mike said.
“It would be nice to know you have someone on staff 24/7, [but] I don’t think we’ll ever be a paid department, just a couple paid people to do paperwork and schedules,” Doug said.
Not all volunteers have to fight fires or respond to medical calls.
“There’s so many different roles that you have in the fire department,” said Jim Landis, a volunteer at the Blowing Rock department and administrator in the Gastonia Fire Department. “If you don’t want to go into the heat, you don’t have to.”
Auxiliaries are organizations of men and women volunteers dedicated to supporting the fire department. They hold fundraisers for the departments and provide food for trainings and special events. When departments are called to long-term firefighting or disaster events, the auxiliary members supply the firefighters with drinkable water, Gatorade and food.
“There’s a lot of great people associated with firefighting,” Wayne said. “A lot of people in the community really don’t understand what is behind operating a fire department.”
Firefighting requires a strong mental mindset, Matt said. Matt, although only 18, has responded to several medical calls to date in which he has witnessed three or four deaths.
“You have to have excitement for the job,” Matt said. “You will have some really bad calls. You have to keep in mind you did your best. If someone died, you have to realize all the other lives you have saved and keep going.”
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