CROSS LAKE, Maine — North Lakes Fire and Rescue is in need of dedicated volunteers looking to serve their community and surrounding area.
“We’ll take anyone with no experience,” Jesse Belanger, deputy fire chief, said. “We offer them lots of training opportunities and we’ll help them get all the required firefighter training and beyond that if they’re interested as well.”
North Lakes Fire and Rescue has been employing volunteers since the early 50s and is a rural paid call fire department with a large coverage area from Sinclair to Cross Lake to Madawaska Lake including three substations and 10 trucks.
They currently have 35 volunteers just shy of the 40 they’d like to have. “We have the training facilities as part of our department so we can usually coordinate that and it usually only takes a couple months to become a firefighter and that’s at a reasonable pace,” Belanger said.
A trend that plagues The County has also taken a bite out of their volunteer base, “a lot of our younger volunteers don’t stay in our area. Typically they’ll be with us a couple years and then they end up moving out of the area looking for work,” he said. Their longest volunteer has been with the department for almost 25 years.
Juggling a day job and serving your community can be taxing, but Belanger said the department trains twice a month with a break during the summer. Those with the fortitude and dedication to fight fires, being a volunteer could even lead to a career.
“We start with the base training that any firefighter in the state of Maine is required to have in order to serve as a volunteer or a career firefighter,” he said. “Beyond that we do have extra training we do offer with extrication and the jaws of life and other specialized fire rescue training from there we have had volunteers that have gone on to work in career fire departments and a few departments in the state from Presque Isle to Bangor.”
For more information on how to become a volunteer firefighter for North Lakes Fire and Rescue visit northlakesfireandrescue.org or call 493-4328.
