Volunteer for Your Community

Helping our neighbors, friends and community has been a long tradition going way back in this country. The tradition started when people migrated to this country from other places all around the world, coming to these shores with pretty much nothing but the shirts on their backs.  Ready to start a new life in a strange environment with virtual strangers. Relying on each other for moral support. Each settler helped the others so as to accomplish something new each day. Farm the land, build homes, build lives and have families.

As the years went by, the farms got bigger, more homes were built on any existing open land etc. Most homes in the early years were built around waterways for many reason. They built churches in the middle of those town since many had strong faith and religious belief. They congregated together at these churches to continue building up and practicing their faith without fear of reprisal or persecution like they had experienced in their former homeland. They became acquaintances and friends. And this allowed them to rely on one another even more thus building trust between them.

As time went on, people VOLUNTEERED their services and time to assist with whatever needed to be accomplished. Nothing was uncompleted or left out when working as a team since each person had a certain gift, skill, experience, knowledge or training. People still have a knack for helping others out but no one wants to do it for free anymore since times have changed through the centuries. Everything is about money. The supplies needed are not free. The patience needed is not always there. I get that people have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Paying taxes, looking for that American dream of being free, owning a home and raising a family. They have to feed, clothe, and shelter that family as well. When things happened in the old days like a fire in a barn, homes caught fire, people getting hurt of injured or even killed. The people in those towns and areas came together and formed bucket brigades to fight those fires bucket after buckets in an attempt to extinguish the fires or helped out to aid a person injured until they were back on their feet. That was the spirit of giving oneself and bettering the community as a whole. They did this knowing that one day it could be them in need of help and they knew others would be there to help and assist. They alerted each other of an emergency through the use of a large bell in town or even the church bell ringing on and on. People would come from miles around to help and volunteer their time and help, no matter what it took to control the situation or emergency

The point of my story is that over time people began wanting to be paid for offering their services like plumbing, electric, gas pipes, refineries, manufacturing, distributing, vehicle repair, policing the area, firefighting, etc.  Money became a necessity since it made life more comfortable as everything around them got to be more expensive to maintain.  People wanted luxuries like TV, cable boxes, food, repairs on the homes they own… greed set in and the art of helping others did not come from the heart anymore.

The volunteer outside the major cities still hold through for the most parts but that is fading fast as people join these volunteer firehouses, ambulance corps and soon leave once they realize the amount of time that it takes to help others, the constant training, and the effort of staying in shape as firefighting is a young person’s job. Just like on an ambulance crew you are constantly lifting people and/or carrying them into hospitals.

Over the years, the idea of volunteering dwindled down as not many have the same ideologies as others when it comes to using their free time away from their families or friends. No one wants to do this for free anymore and like I said people like me are up in age during our golden years where we are retired, old, and physically not capable of climbing a roof to cut a vent in the middle of the night, climbing out of bed getting cramps and muscle pulls at all times of the day and night to help a stranger that never tried to join us when they had the chance and were younger. But when people call 911 when an emergency does occur they hope and pray that someone does get up and respond to their needs.  Although it is hit and miss depending on who is around, not working or away on vacation, sick, having their own family crisis. We are facing a serious shortage like never before on getting volunteers to join and retaining them. Yes, we get a few kids from high school every year to join for a year or two. We train them to survive in fire like conditions in order to survive, buy them $15,000 worth of equipment and firefighting gear so they put it on their resume for college to make it look good. When they leave for college most never return or rejoin. Thus leaving us short once again. A lot has to do with the fact that there is no real affordable housing in this area to come back to. They return with large debts from college loans and have no place to live or hang their hats without going deeper into debt.

I have lived in the hamlet community of Nanuet, Rockland County, New York for over 41 years. We pay the second highest taxes in the nation just behind Westchester County, NY.  Back in the mid 1970s when I first joined the volunteers at 16 years old, Rockland County had over 3,000 plus active volunteer firefighters. Every department had over 100 men and women that were just as active as I was. They ran lumber yards, steel mills, local businesses, cosmetic companies, pharmaceutical companies and so on. When the siren, bells, pagers all went off they responded from where ever they were closing up shops, shutting down business waking up out of beds all to help a neighbor in need. Nanuet runs a lot of calls in our commercial business area since we have one of the busiest areas in the county. We run 600 to 700 runs a year on the average.

I was gung-ho as a youngster. I responded to every call I could make and always kept my percentage high. I went to every training session, seminar, classroom etc. that I could. It opened up and paved my way into joining the FDNY as a professional career firefighter. I eventually studied to become an officer in which I spent 32 years of the greatest years my life fighting fires and helping others that could not help themselves.  I worked in some of the busiest firehouses in Harlem, The South Bronx, etc. and I worked with some of the greatest firefighters that ever walked this earth. They were legends then and still are legends now. I never wanted to leave the job I loved so much but my health from 9/11 injuries showed me the door. But still had a great 32 year run. I still am an active Volunteer in my community although I can no longer respond to fight fires, respond to vehicle accidents or any emergency call but I am happy to pass onto what I learned over the years to the younger members. I teach them how to survive in a toxic and most dangerous environment atmosphere.  I involve myself when we do open houses teaching the young children in school how to prevent fires from happening in their homes. The importance of a working smoke detector. What to do if a fire ever breaks out and so on.

In the volunteer service we now run shorthanded during the daytime hours when most people are at work. We run on whatever manpower we can get to show up to get a fire rig out to answer the call. Sometimes we are lucky and get two or three young kids to show up and no available drivers or a driver with no manpower because kids are in school or working. We now rely on other area fire department to assist us on mutual aid and hope they can supply manpower or a fire rig to respond.

In the past most of Rockland County Fire Department Volunteers were staffed by off duty Police Officers, off duty New York City Firefighters, Utility Workers, business people, retired personal, and people that worked rotating shift. Not any more, no one has the heart into firefighting or the time to help others.  We constantly train and strive to be better firefighters. Learning how to use our equipment to become better at our job when you need us most. We train to extricate people out of twisted vehicle wrecks in the hope of safely removing them and giving them a fighting chance to live and recover. We fight fires just like the big city firefighter except we do it for free.  Most of our ambulance corps in Rockland have become paid ambulance corps since again no wants want to join. Retaining these people is hard as we cannot force people to stay. Some move away to have a better life. Some move on to paid department somewhere else in the country. We did appreciate the time they stayed with us. We are always looking for new blood and new volunteers – So please join us by going to the nearest firehouse in your community and offering us a better way to serve you – our friends and neighbors.

It is only when they need help and in which no one shows up do they understand the importance of volunteering. We will probably be forced to go to a fully paid department or a partially paid department in the near future, just like the rest of the country has gone already. It will most definitely raise our taxes a few thousand dollars (about $3,000 to $4000) a year to provide for the ambulance personal and firefighters that we have now. It will be a shock to most but it is the foreseeable future. We will not see the outcome that we see now at a fire scene with six or seven rigs responding of different sizes and equipment. But they will get there faster since they will be living at the firehouses during their shifts.

So when you see these volunteers with buckets in hand standing out in the freezing rain, snow or on a holiday keep in mind that those few pennies or dollars go a long way to provide refreshment at a fire scene or emergency or another tool to purchase or practice on to help the community they live in – FOR FREE.