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Health & Fitness

Thank You for a Lifetime of Service in the Name of Love

Eighty percent of the fire service in this country is comprised of volunteers.

Each spring I attend the Congressional Fire Services Institute meeting in Washington D.C. The meeting gives first responders the opportunity to train and meet one-on-one with legislators to discuss issues facing the fire service.

It was at this meeting several years ago that a Congressmans’ aide provided an interesting statistic which caught my attention. He said, “Eighty percent of the fire service in this country is comprised of volunteers.”

Which got me to thinking at first,  “Naaaaaaa he can’t be right.”

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However the more I travel around the country over the years the more I realize that he probably is right. You see, here on Long Island, we often think of our volunteer emergency responders in urban and suburban settings; often forgetting about the many many small rural departments scattered across the state and country.

Several years ago I met a chief from a tiny place in the Midwest.

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“Hey Chief so you’re from New York. How you guy’s making out there?”

 I replied, “Fine, thanks for asking.”

We continued talking and he was quite interested to know about our department in New Hyde Park. He  asked me about the amount of the members, the size of our district and our response time to alarms. To that I replied quite proudly, “Chief we have an average response time of three minutes”

He was absolutely flabbergasted. “You’re kidding me, right?”

To which I replied, “Nope. Our local Long Island newspaper did a study and reported the numbers!”.

He said, “ Wow! Our district is so big it can sometime take us a half hour to get to the call depending on where it is.”

My guess is if there is a working fire at the location there can’t be much left of it by the time they get there.  

As of late, you may have gotten something in the mail from your local volunteer fire department or seen one of us in the neighborhood knocking on doors asking for donations. The men and women of this country give their time away from family and jobs to educate themselves and train constantly to protect the residents of their districts. Your donation goes a long way in this effort and is a way of saying to your first responders thank you for what you do.

So to all the brave first responders who give of their time and residents across this country that help support volunteerism – Thank you!  

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