Ask anyone to name important community institutions and it won’t be long before they name the local fire department. It’s what protects us all from disaster, the first responder. When the World Trade Center was attacked, it was firefighters who responded, and many of them lost their lives in the attempt to rescue people.
An island fire department does the many of the same things as its big-city counterpart. But does so in isolation, for the most part – “mutual aid” doesn’t mean much when it has to come by ferry from some other island or even the mainland. And an island department faces many of the same costs for training and equipment – a department that responds to 30 calls a year has to keep up training, a truck and equipment – just like one that goes to fires every day of the year.
So a lack of volunteers for small island departments, as Cherie Galyean reports elsewhere in this issue, is cause for real concern. Like other public services in small communities, island fire departments depend on volunteers to get their jobs done; without them, the community is in trouble.