Volunteers went through training earlier this year. Fire District 6 trained 13 new recruits in two training sessions in 2021.
Recruits find camaraderie, empowerment
If Okanogan County Fire District 6 responds to a call for a house fire or wildfire, or to a car crash on Highway 20, it’s a safe bet there will be volunteers among those first responders.
Like rural fire districts across the state and the country, District 6 relies on volunteers to supplement its full-time staff of six, who work out of the Winthrop and Twisp stations.
“Otherwise it’s volunteers who cover everything else,” said Chief Cody Acord.
The district has 45 volunteer firefighters spread out among stations in Carlton, Twisp, Winthrop and Mazama. So far this year, they’ve already trained 13 new recruits, said Captain Zack Gurney, the district’s recruit training coordinator.
“I saw someone with a license plate that said ‘volunteer fire department,’ and it hadn’t even crossed my mind until I saw that,” said Rick Zeeb, who volunteers at the Carlton station and took part in this fall’s training academy. “I didn’t want to be one of those people who moved up here and didn’t do anything.”
Zeeb remembered being on one of the first engines to respond to the Cub Creek 2 Fire this summer.
“That was pretty intense,” he said. “The smoke and the heat and you can’t see anything. It’s a little confusing. It was eye-opening for sure.”
Friends and neighbors
Most of the recruitment for fire district volunteers is done through word of mouth, Gurney said.
“This community is amazing how they … see something happen and they want to see how they can help,” he said.
Sometimes they see a fire district response and recognize friends and neighbors among the volunteers, he said, or like this summer, they find themselves in the middle of a wildfire and want to help out.
Jerry Oliver volunteered after being evacuated from his home when the Cedar Creek Fire reached Wolf Creek Road this summer. Though he once was a volunteer firefighter in Ohio, that was 25 years ago. At one of the fire information meetings in Winthrop this summer, he said he asked Acord if he “needed any more old guys on the crew.”
“I thought, everybody should give back to their community in some way or another, and the fire department’s right up my alley,” he said.
Another of this year’s recruits, Miles Milliken, began visiting the area as a child when his grandparents retired here, and moved to the Methow Valley full time in 2015.
“We have a fantastic fire department here,” he said. “We have so many special parts of this valley, and I feel like I’ve found my special part of the valley and my community.”
Milliken ran unopposed in November to serve on the district’s board. He volunteers out of the district’s Twisp station.
Zeeb also said the experience widened his social circle.
“It’s a great experience. It’s a great way to get to know people,” he said. “I’ve met people from Carlton all the way to Mazama.”
Commitment to community
Volunteer numbers have trended downward in recent decades, Acord said.
“In the ’80s it seemed like there was a higher amount of volunteers then, but this has happened nationally,” he said.
In general, people have a harder time getting away from jobs to respond to a fire call, and live farther away from their local fire station. Training requirements have increased for firefighters over the years, and being a volunteer firefighter can be a large time commitment and is often physically demanding.
“If you’re available, you come,” Gurney said. “So if you can’t show up, or you choose not to show up, it kind of puts more burden on the people who do. It’s a lot for us to ask volunteers, but they make that commitment. With everything else going on in their lives we still have people working full time.”
Other than being able to make the time commitment, there are few qualifiers for volunteers. Recruits can be working or retired, young, or middle aged and male or female. If a person wants to volunteer, it’s likely the district can find something they can do.
“I think the sort of stereotype is you have to be big and lumbering,” Gurney said. I think historically … it’s mostly men that are in the field, so it’s hard to break that stereotype.”
Emilia Sweeney, a part-time Mazama resident who volunteers at her local station, is a good example of Gurney’s point.
“With all of the gear on for structure firefighting, that’s 62 extra pounds,” she said. “That’s more than half my weight.”
Sweeney decided to volunteer out of a sense of civic obligation and a desire to protect her community — but she didn’t really expect to be asked to suit up and spray some water herself.
“I joined or signed up to become a volunteer firefighter partly with a misunderstanding as to what my role would be,” she said. “I thought that volunteer firefighters helped the professional firefighters. … I didn’t think that I would be learning to climb ladders and doing a leg lock so I could lean out and not hold on to the ladder while I’m 15 feet in the air spraying water into a building. I didn’t think I could do that.”
But now she can. And Sweeney said that experience has been very empowering.
Another pair of hands
“Everybody’s very welcome of participation [at] whatever level you can give,” Milliken said. “With any situation, there’s always something for another pair of hands to do.”
People volunteer through the year, and can be assigned a number of lower-level activities before they go through the formal recruit training program, which typically happens twice a year, or when enough people have signed up.
“It’s pretty amazing to fill out a little bit of paperwork and get an orientation and all of a sudden you get a pager and you can start responding,” Gurney said.
Gurney became a full-time staff member at District 6 earlier this year, and previously worked as a professional firefighter for the City of Auburn. He got his start in firefighting through volunteering, and also previously was a volunteer for District 6.
The district trained six new recruits in the spring and another seven in the fall. This fall’s recruit academy was the first that Gurney managed.
The volunteer academies involve 80 hours of classroom time, practical training and homework. Recruits must pass a final exam and final skills assessment.
“There’s a lot to learn,” Gurney said. “If you’re not from that sort of world it’s almost like a whole new language.”
The district is always looking to increase its volunteer base, and is also looking forward to new programs. The new Winthrop station will have sleeping quarters, which could be used by volunteers taking assigned shifts, or through some other arrangement. Gurney said the district is also pursuing a vocational tech program, so volunteers could use their training to help qualify them for professional firefighting jobs.
For more information on Okanogan County Fire District 6 or on how to volunteer, go to Okanogancountyfd6, or email zgurney@okanogancountyfd6.com.
