It’s 3 a.m. and you are in a deep sleep, trying to recover some hours from yesterday when you stayed up all night studying for a test. Suddenly, the pager goes off on your bedside table. Like instinct, you look at it, wiping the sleep from your eyes to locate the emergency and the information needed to attend to the alarm. Without thinking, you put on your clothes and head down the street toward the station, hoping to make it in time before the fire trucks leave. Listening to your radio, you find out more about the emergency and what you will encounter this morning.
George Weathersbee, one of the administrators for the county’s firefighters knows the importance of the student and volunteer firefighters in this community. As an authorized driver, he knows the importance of commitment from his team. He leads the East Fire Station on Highway 182.
There is no pay involved, but “they help their community,” stated Weathersbee about his volunteer firefighters.
“It is quite a commitment of time,” Weathersbee said.
Weathersbee stated the importance of commitment to the team since the fire fighting equipment costs over $3,000 including breathing apparatus and pagers.
The county provides a high percentage of the money, but each individual fire station must raise the rest from fundraisers.
“Students have been as responsible as the general public,” Weathersbee said.
According to Weathersbee, the minority of the fires are structural. The departments respond to brush fires and try to get them out while they are still small and controllable. The job of these firefighters is to protect the people within their community and their homes and the best way to insure that is to respond as early as possible.
Large portions of calls are responses to wrecks, such as fuel spills, which can be a potential for a fire so the firefighters have to clean it up.
“This job is pretty demanding, but rewarding too … [the firefighters] have greatly improved the quality of Starkville,” Weathersbee said.
Fire Chief Greg Ball of East Oktibbeha Fire Station does not deal within the city limits of Starkville.
Fire Chief Bennett George of Central Oktibbeha County Fire station in Longview, a few miles outside of Starkville, has fewer student volunteers since it is requested that volunteer firefighters must live within the territory of their department.
Scott Gilbert, a volunteer firefighter at East Oktibbeha County and a political science major graduating in May, has been involved since he was 14 years old. He started working full time four years later in Brandon, Miss. He worked there for four years until he decided to come to MSU.
“I get a feeling of accomplishment and self worth,” Gilbert said about being a volunteer firefighter in Starkville. He said that he is a student before a firefighter, but over 90 percent of the time, volunteering does not interfere with his studies.