For one volunteer firefighter in Pine Haven, Wyoming, helping is the biggest reward : NPR
Volunteer firefighters are essential in many small, rural communities. They’re especially needed in the Western U.S. where fires have been growing. We’ll meet one of them.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Wildfires in the western U.S. have been growing larger in recent years. That includes Wyoming. In 2024, the state had its worst fire season in decades. Small towns like Pine Haven, near the border with South Dakota, rely on a network of volunteers with limited resources to battle the deadly blazes. As a part of our series Here To Help, Wyoming Public Radio’s Chris Clements met up with one of the town’s volunteer firefighters.
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CHRIS CLEMENTS, BYLINE: Inside Pine Haven’s fire station, T.J. Gideon inspects a cherry-colored fire engine.
TJ GIDEON: So this truck will – it’s got all of our…
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GIDEON: All the tools in it – fire line…
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GIDEON: …Tools. It does have a portable tank on it.
CLEMENTS: Next, he steps into the cab, swings the door closed and checks the ignition.
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CLEMENTS: Gideon has lived in Pine Haven – population 565 – for 15 years. He got interested in volunteering after seeing the winking lights of an ambulance driving through town. It made him wonder who was doing that work.
GIDEON: It’s something you don’t think about ’cause the common person just expects if they call 911, someone’s coming. You know, in the rural areas, it’s not – you know, you’re not guaranteed that.
CLEMENTS: Volunteer firefighting is a big obligation. It’s not just fighting fires. It’s being ready for them.
GIDEON: We train on everything. We train on wild land fire, the grass fires, stuff like that. And then we focus a lot on the structural house fires.
CLEMENTS: Volunteer firefighters like him get a stipend for expenses. In his case, it’s 500 a month. It’s a commitment that requires a lot of personal sacrifices.
GIDEON: There’s times, you know, where we pick and choose. What are we going to do? It’s a beautiful day. Should we go get out on the boat or something? But it’s a red flag day also, which means high fire potential, had a lightning storm a couple nights ago. So you skip it, and you just wait for the page.
CLEMENTS: And that’s not a hypothetical. Gideon says recently, his family threw a birthday party for one of his two daughters down by the lake.
GIDEON: I literally just got there, and the pager went off. I knew by the page it was a call that I felt I had to go to, so I did. You know, I chose it. That’s where the family support is so important.
CLEMENTS: Last year, Wyoming’s governor used words like historic and unprecedented to describe the fire season. Charlie Harrison is the fire warden for the whole county. He’s been working closely with Gideon, especially last year.
CHARLIE HARRISON: That was like fires every day. The volunteers were getting burned out. You know, we were stretched pretty thin.
CLEMENTS: Gideon owns a fleet of ATM machines and a bar in a nearby town. That’s what allows him to be a volunteer firefighter.
GIDEON: Well, I do it for free. I think it’s just the drive, the commitment. Someone’s got to do it.
CLEMENTS: And he says his motivation to do what he does is still burning hot.
GIDEON: The biggest reward is – after a call is knowing, hey, we just did that. We just helped this. We just solved this problem.
CLEMENTS: One report says volunteer recruiting in fire departments across the state is down. But not in Pine Haven. Gideon says they have 28 volunteers right now, up from seven when he first joined. The youngest is 19 years old, the oldest 75.
For NPR News, I’m Chris Clements in Crook County, Wyoming.
SUMMERS: You can find more stories of volunteerism in America and share your own story about giving back at npr.org/heretohelp.
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