VFD

The Volunteer Fire Department. I was a little surprised that they still existed. I thought this was clearly the responsibilty of the government. Turns out I was wrong when it comes to very small towns.

For most of Birdseye's history and the surrounding little communities, when a fire started burning, you were left to whatever spontaneous help was available. For this reason, a lot of Birdseye has burned down over the years. It gets rebuilt in one form or another but several old buildings are gone. Such as the Livery, Hotels (there were two), etc.

But about 50 years ago, people around here started to organize a system to respond to these emergencies. I'm told my grandfather and Uncle were two original VFD members and that my Uncle Allen was the chief for several years.

I'm not sure how it worked then but I know that now it works by community people volunteering to go through the same training as paid fire department personnel. They are given pagers and blue lights on their dashboards and when a fire breaks out, they respond when they can. Their training includes Haz Mat, First Responder Emergency Technicians, etc. Same as their paid counterparts.

I used to think I volunteered a lot in my neighborhood back in Detroit.