Anyone here a volunteer, or been?
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Find out what they expect of a volunteer. I was a volunteer for many years until I moved to an area without a volunteer department and worked alongside many volunteer departments over the years. Some are very professional and want the same thing a quality paid department wants, others are desperate for any warm body who will actually show up for drill and calls, most fall somewhere in between.

As a generalization volunteer departments will be interested in someone who has a genuine interest in the fire service and serving the community as opposed to someone looking for a stepping stone to get a paid firefighter job, most understand that is what many are looking for but being a volunteer is a very time consuming proposition (I used to spend upwards of 40 hours per month at the department) so anything you can do to convence them you are serious about these issues should help. If your "real" job has a flexible schedule or you work unusual hours that may be worth bringing up, typically volunteer departments have "hard to fill" times, typically during the day when people are at work but sometimes circumstances result in other times that people are unavailable.

Any construction, fabrication or vehicle repair skills may go far (many departments cannot afford to hire somebody to do work on the station or build a rack for a new piece of equipment etc). If you have any other volunteer experience to show them you have an idea of what you are getting into that would be good to work in, I know many career firefighters who would never be a volunteer because they say its too much work, volunteers typically know this and are proud of the fact they do something many can't or won't.

As far as certs and training this is a grey area and it would be worth investigating, some departments will be impressed if you have lots of education, others may be intimidated or figure you will be too hard to retrain "the real way".

Some volunteer departments test formally like a career department, others the oral interviews are really just a get to know you session.

I know this is somewhat vague but hopefully you get something useful out of it. I'm rather surprised nobody has had anything to say about it, I would hope there were a few volunteer firefighters out there.

I am a volunteer down here in SouthWest Washington with a traditional rural all volunteer department. We dont have any paid or resident positions but we do have four stations and a 50 person roster. We have RN's,one paramedic,EMT-B's,and first responders. We try to train all personnel to the level of FF1/FR. We dont transport but have a transport provider that can usually be in district within 20-30 minutes. On trauma calls we always put LifeFlight on standby and assess the need to activate on arrival after giving an update to the responding medic unit. Our ground transport time to a level 1 trauma center is at least 1 hour and can be as long as 2 depeding on access to the patient,so most Traumas go by bird. I was once going to look into a resident volunteer program (two nights a month) somewhere up your way in Pierce County but they had residency requirements. I may start testing again in early 2004 but my window to move to a paid position is slowly closing. You can pull up some of my past posts for other info, I dont think there are many volunteers on this board and if there is they dont post much.