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(SGFD Photo)
There are 7 stations from which the St. George Fire department operates with number eight under construction scheduled for completion in January 2011. Each fire station is staffed by 7-10 volunteers who carry pagers and their own "turnout" gear to respond as needed.
Two of the fire stations are manned with full time personnel that work 24/7 schedules. Each night a volunteer assists each of the two full time crews from 10:00pm to 6:00am to maintain a four-person engine company and cover scheduled leaves. Twenty-nine (29) of the volunteers cover the shifts as part time employees.
Each St. George firefighter volunteer is dedicated, fully-trained, and certified like full-time firefighters. The department is licensed by the State of Utah as emergency medical response personnel basic level. This requires all paid firefighters and many volunteer firefighters who work shifts to be trained and certified EMT’s.
During 2009, the St. George Fire Department responded to over 5,000 emergency service calls. The volunteer firefights are dedicated to their work. The only compensation volunteers are provided is basic health insurance coverage offered by the city. The ability of the city to utilize a combination of paid and volunteer fire fighters provides a significant savings to the citizens of St. George.
The community has a rich tradition of volunteer firefighters that is pushed to the max by the challenges and demands of a dynamically growing population with social and economic pressure prevalent in communities like St. George. Today volunteers help the department meet these needs and challenges. The full-time and volunteer firefighters are continue to expand their knowledge, training and specialty areas of response that include emergency medical care, hazardous materials, airport rescue and firefighting, and technical rescue. These areas of specialization that require many hours of additional training to learn the skills and maintain the required certification.
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