In a small room at the local Seminole Trail Volunteer Fire Department, University students sleep lightly, knowing an emergency call could come at any moment. When the siren goes off, volunteers rush to the scene, prepared for anything.
“When the tones drop in the station and you rush towards your assigned seat on the engine, you don’t know [what] you’re rushing towards or what you’ll be asked to do when you get to the scene,” second-year College student Alice Thomson said in an email.
For 21 undergraduate and four graduate students at the University, volunteering at the fire station provides valuable skills — teaching them how to remain calm during emergencies and provide care to victims harmed in accidents.
“Being calm in stressful situations is definitely something people don’t naturally have all the time,” said fourth-year College student Sarah Kelley. “I’ve gained [practice] in being able to address situations calmly and figure out what I need to do even though people around me, potentially people involved in the situation, are feeling stressed.”
The skills learned on the job also follow volunteers into their classroom, Thomson said.
“Volunteering at Seminole Trail has already faced me with challenges and given me experiences I never thought I would have,” Thomson said in an email. “So I think that my unique experiences can always help when writing, reading or discussing any topic, even if it seems like the farthest thing away from firefighting.”
University students have greatly expanded the number of volunteer workers at the fire department.
“Our student volunteers have been critical to our success as an organization because they make up a large percentage of our membership population,” Chief Daniel Tawney said. “We are the busiest fire department in Albemarle County, and we have the largest amount of volunteers in Albemarle County, and it’s really just because of the students.”
Student volunteers come with an eagerness to help the community, Captain Erik Larson said.
“They support with enthusiasm because they come in and they’re always excited to learn and … find new ways to help,” Larson said. “They set the bar exceptionally high for the other people who come in and volunteer and, in a lot of cases, the people who have leadership positions within the station either are student volunteers or they were students at one point and they were able to stay with the station after they graduated.”
Part of the appeal to students was the station’s relocation this past October — to a facility with study spaces for students and larger bunk areas, Tawney said.
“It helped us quite a bit this past year when we were recruiting at U.Va. for new members [and] when they came down and got to see the big building and how nice it was,” Tawney said. “It doesn’t just look like work; it can also be fun.”
While the new station has made balancing volunteer work and school work easier for students, working at the station still comes with challenges, like the massive amount of information firefighters must commit to memory during training.
“We, at the station, do a lot of training already, and use some of the most intense training of all the fire stations in the county,” Kelley said. “One of the most stressful parts is making sure that we are all prepared to run calls, making sure we know what we need to do [and] having our priorities in order, so that when we get a call, our emotions don’t take over.”
Another challenge student volunteers face is trusting one another to take the proper steps during emergencies, though this also builds long-lasting relationships among volunteers.
“[While] at the fire department, you sleep in the same room as people of the opposite gender [whom] you don’t know that well,” Kelley said. “You wake up in the middle of the night and you expect them to be able to go in after you in a burning building if something happens. [Our work] builds a level of trust and friendship that is very unusual because we will spend 12 or 48 hour shifts together. ... I think the friendships that develop are lifelong and really strong and unique because of that — knowing that [someone] has your back all the time.”
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