“Even if you just change one life, you’ve changed the world forever.”
Mike Satterfield
Time is of the essence. Time is our most valuable asset. Time is infinite on the whole, but finite for the individual. How we spend our time determines our impact, our legacy, the significance of our existence. It is also the main investment that is required to be a volunteer firefighter or emergency medical provider. We give our precious time to the greater good, to the interest of our fellow man, to the benefit of the communities we live in.
Volunteer firefighters invest time in training. We invest time in fundraising as the funding that we receive from the municipalities that we protect covers basic operating costs only, requiring us to supplement this funding to purchase new equipment, tools and apparatus. We spend time on community outreach, including parades, fire safety instruction in schools and day cares, local community events, and other outreach opportunities. We spend time serving as officers in the interest of improving the quality of our service and the safety of our fellow firefighters. We spend time in meetings, serving on committees and operating in administrative positions to guide and form the direction that our fire department will take, architecting the future of our service.
What drives volunteer first responders to give of their time? Is it the excitement? Getting to play with cool toys? Notoriety or recognition? Is there some hidden benefit or payment for the time that they sacrifice? Short answer: no.
We volunteer because we are driven to make the lives of the people around us better. It is the heart of a hero, and it lives within most all of us. What better way to truly help our community than to respond 24/7 to the urgent calls of our neighbors at their greatest time of need? There is no greater calling than to lift people up at these critical times; to lend a hand, or a shoulder, or a strong back at a time when it may make all the difference.
We live for these moments. These calls are not run-of-the-mill. Most of our 360 or so calls each year are relatively non-emergent, predictable, and easily handled. Then there are those times where our members have a chance to truly change the course of someone’s life: quickly applying a dressing or tourniquet to a severe wound, extrication of a trapped motorist from their mangled vehicle, saving possessions, pets/animals, or even rescuing someone from a burning building, providing CPR to someone in cardiac arrest, searching for and rescuing someone who is lost, evacuating flooding victims, or some other act where your show up and it can make a real difference. These are the times that are a true test of our training. They are inflection points in the lives of those we care for, and actually in our lives as well sometimes. These moments are why we joined the fire service.
To be 100% transparent: the adrenaline rush of fighting a fire is addictive. Playing with fire trucks, rescue tools and saws is pretty cool. Using tools to tear down ceilings and walls can be fun (and exhausting.) Knowing the right thing to do during a medical emergency and making it happen is empowering. Some may say the camaraderie with your brother and sister firefighters is a lifelong connection that is the greatest reward of all, and I cannot argue that. In my opinion though, the greatest reward for being a firefighter or emergency medical provider is knowing that you did your best to make a difference, and those times when you do get to make a life-altering difference for someone in need, there is no better feeling in the world, and truly is the most valuable dividend returned from our time investment.
Time is your most valuable asset, but can have the greatest impact when given to the greater good. It also has a multiplicative effect when combined with the time that others give to the cause. When many of us work together, the burden is less on each of us and our impact is greater. In recent years, participation in the volunteer fire service has declined at an alarming rate. The responsibility for responding to incidents has fallen on fewer shoulders. Never has the need been greater for volunteers.
