VIDEO: A huge number of Little Rock neighbors rely on people who kept their dreams of becoming firefighters alive while keeping their day jobs.
“Our folks are dedicated, and they’re willing to sacrifice some of those things to help their neighbors and assist the community,” said Scott Joblin, the fire chief for the West Pulaski County Volunteer Fire Department. “That does pose a challenge when we have folks that are responding from home or work, their sleep is getting interrupted. Their meals are getting interrupted. Family time is getting interrupted.”
It’s easy to wonder why people would sign up for that kind of work, but then for people like Joblin, fighting fires is practically family time anyway, for the full-time insurance broker.
“I grew up in the firehouse, and I knew that this was something I wanted to do,” he described. “In fact, I started this in Pennsylvania and was moved to Arkansas for work about 13 years ago, and I told the realtor that I needed to live in a volunteer fire department area.”
Joblin now lives in one of the largest volunteer service areas in the state, but despite the huge area, the volunteers take pride in how they protect it.
“We cover 161 square miles with a total of six stations. We have about 60 dedicated volunteers on the roster,” Joblin said. “No, call is too small for us. If someone needs assistance and they call 911, we’re going to respond. We cover a very diverse area. We have some pretty high-density populace, where we have lots of houses close together all the way to, you know, barren land, where it’s just forest.”
The department took on some high-profile calls earlier this year when red flag conditions fueled a wildfire that sent smoke over Pinnacle Mountain.
An outbreak a few days later had the West Pulaski crews spread thin while their professional colleagues in Little Rock had every truck in the city out on calls at one point.
Days like that make it easy to ignore any distinctions between public employees and unpaid volunteers โ and have us all grateful for the work they do.
“They compete against each other in friendly ways,” said Joblin. “But when the time comes to go to work, all those rivalries stop and everyone’s just one big team, whether it’s just West Pulaski or working with Little Rock or our other volunteer neighbors. We’re all on the same team, and we’re all working together to get the job done.”
