Always on call: Little Creek Volunteer Fire Co. staffs station 24 hours a day

By Craig Anderson
Posted 5/15/21

LITTLE CREEK — For more than a year now, at all times of the day or night, there’s been a crew inside the Little Creek Volunteer Fire Co. ready to mobilize immediately.

That’s 24 …

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Always on call: Little Creek Volunteer Fire Co. staffs station 24 hours a day

Posted

LITTLE CREEK — For more than a year now, at all times of the day or night, there’s been a crew inside the Little Creek Volunteer Fire Co. ready to mobilize immediately.

That’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week since the early stages of the pandemic in March 2020.

An engine driver, credentialed company officer and two fully trained firefighters can gear up and respond to a scene just a few moments after a call arrives, and the community is far safer for that.

Or, as Capt. Jorge Moctezuma explained, “A minute can save someone’s life. If we have someone in cardiac arrest, that minute buys us a lot of time.”

On May 2, a unit left the station for a fire scene in the area of Pickering Beach Road within 1 minute, 16 seconds, Little Creek Chief Scott Bundek said.

Fire company leaders hatched the plan to increase member safety at the dawn of COVID-19. When a call arrived, the station siren would blow and member’s pagers would activate. Not all the responding firefighters would be needed, however.

“When people would come from their homes and only one truck would respond to the incident, there might be 15 to 20 people who could potentially be exposed to COVID,” Chief Bundek said.

The company had previously enlisted members to staff a crew on Monday nights and Saturdays. Going full-time, all the time was another matter, Chief Bundek said.

“In the beginning we weren’t sure how it was going to work since it was all volunteer,” he said.

“We found that in the beginning people didn’t have anything to do, it was something to do, you come to the firehouse, hang out.

“As it went on everybody kind of got close. As we got into the summer and things kind of loosened up, people began doing other things together, we didn’t see this fall apart.”

The call for duty has been well received to say the least. Of Little Creek VFC’s 63 active members, an average of 45 of them have signed up for time slots each month.

“These folks are treating this like it’s their paid job, they take it seriously,” Chief Bundek said. “It’s not like if something better comes up ‘I’m not going to be there.’

“They try to find their niche and they stay committed.”

All told, Little Creek VFC members volunteer abut 4,100 hours a month, Chief Bundek said.

Brendan Fitzpatrick said he commits to 12- or 24-hour shifts once or twice a week.

“I think it’s been an overall great experience,” he said. “This is what everyone wants to do — come up here and staff a fire truck.

“This is what I want and to do as my job and so do a lot of other people, so this kind of gives us that career department feeling and plus we give better service because we’re there a lot quicker.”

For Michael McLain, he spends his crew time “with a great group of people, especially when you get to know everyone so much better, start to learn how they think. We work a lot better together because our bond has gotten so much stronger with all the time here.”

In-between fire and medical emergency calls, there ample time for training. While there was a standard Tuesday night training session, along with some weekends, “Now every day is a training day depending on who is here and what they need to go over.”

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