Over a lunch, coworker and now volunteer firefighter Nick gave me a short tour of one of Maplewood’s five fire stations. I hadn’t been in a fire station since I was a small child so I took the opportunity to visit one.
The majority of the fire fighting force in Maplewood is essentially volunteer. They are paid-per-call but the payment is so small I’d consider it a stipend that pays for fuel to get to the fire station. There’s about fifteen full time firefighters as well and across the five stations they handle over 3,500 calls a year.
I asked Nick, who’s also volunteers in the Maplewood Reserve Police, why he decided to get involved. “I saw the kind of work they were doing when I was on patrol and I wanted to get more involved in helping people out.” He added he has a friend at another station and his uncle was also a retired volunteer firefighter as well. Nick wears a receiver on his belt to hear calls and he gets to choose which ones to follow up on. They’re required to participate in a certain number of calls a month. It’s truly a noble activity considering there’s basically no compensation.
For safety and legal reasons, he didn’t let me drive the fire truck.
Check out a few more photos on Flickr.
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