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Photo by Mic Smith
Well prepared
Firefighters for South Lynches Fire Department attend classroom sessions, station drills, or skills training with fellow crew members from the department at least twice a month to maintain readiness to respond to fires and other emergencies at a moment’s notice.
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Photo by Mic Smith
Drill team
James Epps, a captain with South Lynches Fire Department in Lake City, briefs volunteer firefighters before a Tuesday-night live-burn exercise.
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Photo by Mic Smith
In harm's way
South Lynches volunteers move cautiously inside the smoke-filled burn building during a training exercise, relying on coordinated teamwork and constant communication to complete their task and get out safely.
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Photo by Mike Eaddy/SLFD
On the scene
Realistic training scenarios allow volunteer firefighters to respond quickly and effectively to real emergencies, like this house fire in Lake City.
Dark smoke is seeping out from tiny gaps around the doors, windows and eaves. It is silent, sinister, hinting at the flames burning somewhere inside. An upstairs window bursts open, unleashing a gray cloud that wraps the scene in a murky haze, scratching at the eyes and throats of onlookers.
Fire hose in hands, three volunteers with South Lynches Fire Department push through the front door. They plow through thick smoke and searing heat in tight formation, their right hands grazing walls as they feel their way in the dark.
Bundled head to toe in bulky protective gear, a limited air supply strapped to their backs, they know the clock is ticking. Hands and eyes sweep each room, searching for anyone who may be trapped, waiting for rescue.
Find the victim, fight the fire, get out safely—that’s their mission, even when it’s just another Tuesday-night drill.
The South Lynches volunteers are among more than 11,000 unpaid firefighters who serve across South Carolina. By day, you’ll find them at their regular jobs or in school. On training nights, like this live-burn drill, they give up time with families and friends to sweat through strenuous maneuvers so they’ll be ready when the emergency is real. And when the alarm sounds, they come—at all hours, well trained and willing to help. For free.
“They get nothing,” says South Lynches Fire Chief Robbie Steele, a Santee Electric Cooperative member and a 40-year volunteer.
“They’re putting their lives on the line to save somebody else.”
When they’re needed the most
It was the real deal last June, when South Lynches firefighters responded to a warehouse fire at East Coast Erosion Blankets in Lake City, where millions of pounds of stored straw bales caught fire. The alarm sounded shortly before 9 a.m. on a Friday. Within five minutes, the first volunteers were on the scene, Steele says.
Over the next 34 hours, more than 100 firefighters—South Lynches crews, plus others from neighboring departments and across the state—battled the huge blaze even as outside temperatures soared to 103 F. Steele rotated his volunteers in and out of the warehouse frequently, giving them time to cool down and grab fresh air tanks.
By Saturday evening, the exhausted volunteers had quenched the fire and minimized property damage, with no injuries other than a few cases of heat exhaustion.
Steele can recite multiple stories of how South Lynches volunteers have saved lives and property because they were trained and ready to respond to emergencies at a moment’s notice. But not all calls have happy endings.
Firefighter Tim Watson, a volunteer with Edgefield Fire Department, doesn’t like to talk about it, but he has vivid memories of responding at the scene of a head-on collision between a semi-trailer truck and a family car carrying a father and his two children. The kids survived; the father did not.
“It was a gruesome thing to have to deal with,” says Watson, a first-class lineman with Aiken Electric Cooperative. “You bring it home with you, but you don’t dwell on it. That separates the people who can do the job from those who can’t handle it.”
A routine call to a fire or accident often turns out to be the moment you made a critical difference in someone’s life, says Greg Tisdale, a volunteer for both Williamsburg County Fire Department and Kingstree Fire Department.
“When somebody’s life is falling apart, you’re there to save what you can,” says Tisdale, project manager for safety and training at Santee Electric Cooperative. “You’re there when they need you the most.”
The heart of a volunteer
Being willing and able to help their neighbors is why volunteers like Watson and Tisdale—along with many other co-op employees and members statewide—join volunteer fire departments.
“It’s something you don’t do on a whim,” Watson says. “You have to have a calling to want to help the community.”
The job demands a hefty time commitment. That’s the biggest challenge in recruiting and keeping volunteers, who make up nearly two-thirds of South Carolina’s firefighting forces. Over the past 30 years, the number of volunteers across the U.S. has dropped 13 percent, creating a shortage in South Carolina and other states, according to Bryan Riebe, recruitment and retention coordinator for the S.C. State Firefighters Association.
Forward-looking departments, like South Lynches, are recruiting young volunteers still in high school, beginning their extensive training before jobs and families start competing for their time, Riebe says.
“We try to get recruits in as junior members,” says James Epps, captain and personnel coordinator for South Lynches, which serves parts of Florence and Williamsburg counties.
“By the time they turn 18, they’ve already completed their training, and they can start fighting fires.”
Volunteers complete all the same training that paid firefighters do, Epps says. Fires pose the same dangers whether you’re paid to fight them or not. And many calls also demand skills for handling vehicle accidents, medical emergencies and hazardous waste incidents.
The basic course is 113 hours and covers firefighting essentials, including rescues, ladder and rope skills, water supply, ventilation, and live-fire training. Paid firefighters can knock that out in four weeks of full-day training, but it takes about three months for volunteers in part-time classes, Epps says.
Add in mandatory training on hazardous materials, plus learning first aid and CPR, which South Lynches requires, and more coursework to achieve Firefighter 1 or 2 status—all told, it’s nearly 200 hours. Once certified, all firefighters attend regular drills to keep skills fresh.
“It’s a real challenge. There’s what life requires of you, then you throw in what we require—it’s tough,” Epps says.
There’s more training if you want to be allowed to drive the fire truck. (Doesn’t everybody want to drive the truck? “Yeah,” Epps admits with a grin, “some people just want to drive the truck!”) Drivers pick up an added responsibility, he says: “Somebody has to come and get the truck when the call comes in at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.”
Then there’s the challenge of learning how to suit up in 60 pounds of bunker gear in less than two minutes, from the feet up—boots, pants, suspenders, jacket, flash hood (covers the head and tucks into the coat collar), air pack with body straps, face mask, helmet and gloves.
To give me a feel for it all, Steele let me suit up in his bunker gear and walk through a smoke-filled live-burn drill. It took five helpful firefighters about seven minutes to get me fitted and tucked safely into all the gear. And, yes, it’s very heavy—even heavier when it gets wet.
‘What if nobody answers it?’
Balancing department duties with jobs and families is an ongoing challenge for volunteers.
Calls for help are almost always “not good timing—usually you’re not just sitting around,” says Josh Strickland, a married father of two young children who volunteers with Grove Fire Department in Anderson County. On a recent evening, after being up late with his kids, he got called out to a house fire at 1:30 a.m., came home exhausted three hours later, and had to get ready for work as a Little River Electric Cooperative lineman at 5 a.m.
But when that tell-tale tone sounds on the pager, volunteers feel a deep sense of obligation to respond.
“If you’re a paid firefighter, you work your shift, and you go home, but if you’re a volunteer, whenever that tone goes off, you go,” Watson says. “What if nobody answers it?”
Employers vary in the freedom they give volunteers to leave work to respond to emergency calls, Epps says. Smaller, family-owned businesses may be more willing to let an employee leave to fight a fire. Corporate bosses may be less flexible.
Chris Cady, manager of supply chain and facilities for Aiken Electric Cooperative, knows linemen aren’t always able to leave a job site to respond to emergencies. In his office role, Cady, who volunteers as a firefighter with Couchton Fire Rescue and chairs its board of trustees, has a little more freedom.
“You find a lot of firemen at co-ops, even on the line crew where it’s not as easy to get away. Sometimes it’s easier [for me] to say, ‘Hey, nothing’s happening right this minute, I can run down to this medical call and be back in an hour or two,’ ” Cady says. “Not many companies would let their employees do that.”
Aiken Electric, located in Couchton’s service district, has a “symbiotic relationship” with the department, Cady says, supporting volunteers’ service and providing extra equipment to the fire department when needed.
“There’s a real connection between the co-op and the fire department,” Cady says. “The co-op has that commitment to community, and the service I give to the fire department is part of serving the community.”
Backbone of the nation
Unlike so many S.C. fire departments that are struggling to keep enough volunteers trained and ready to help in an emergency, South Lynches is “comfortable” right now, Steele says, with 130 firefighters on its roster, answering 800 to 1,000 calls a year.
But recruiting goes on constantly, because the numbers can change in an instant. A tragedy, like the heartbreaking small-plane crash that killed a father and his young son some years back, can result in volunteers quitting en masse, Steele says. “It was not good; I had 15 to 18 of them after that say, ‘I can’t take this.’ ” On the flip side, a public triumph can attract new volunteers, like the successful search through the woods South Lynches led for a missing toddler on a recent Christmas Eve.
“After that, we had five or six adults join us. They said, ‘We want to be part of your department, because you didn’t give up; nobody went home until you found him,’” Steele recalls.
Watson says that kind of dedication is what makes volunteer firefighters “the backbone of the nation.” There’s no glory or glamour, he says, “not like what you see on TV.”
“There’s no reward. You’re not getting anything for it,” Watson says. “Except you hope that somebody would do it for you.”
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If you want to volunteer
No matter what first attracts someone to volunteering as a firefighter, eventually the service is its own reward, South Lynches Fire Department Capt. James Epps says.
“People may walk in the door for excitement. But two or three years down the road, they don’t care as much about that,” Epps says. “It’s more about helping people.”
Volunteers can serve as firefighters, EMTs, administrative helpers, chaplains, or other auxiliary supporters. Training requirements vary according to the position. Teens can start training as young as 15 through junior programs, but they cannot participate in active firefighting until they turn 18.
Requirements for serving as a volunteer firefighter vary by local fire department, but generally volunteers must:
- be at least 18 years of age;
- have a high school diploma or GED;
- pass a SLED background check; and
- be approved as medically fit for duty.
To volunteer, visit scvolunteerfire.org or call the National Volunteer Fire Council recruitment line at (800) 347-3546.
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Related stories
Concern for community – Meet some of the the co-op employees and members who serve as emergency first responders across South Carolina.
Suiting up for fire training – Diane Veto Parham goes inside a live-burn training drill with the volunteers of South Lynches Fire Department.