Tight-knit community supports fire department
Submitted by jcht2010 on
Cape Carancahua isn’t a large community, and maybe because of that, it is a tight-knit one. Craig Brooks, the chief of the Carancahua Volunteer Fire Department, said in a community that size, things couldn’t run smoothly without volunteers.
“There’s just so much that needs to be done,” he said “and in a county that doesn’t have a lot of population and not a lot of heavy industry, it’s hard to get a lot of that done.”
From hosting nights out in the community, to responding to wrecks and providing assistance to surrounding departments, to being the first ones on scene when someone within the Carancahua community needs medical assistance, the Carancahua Volunteer Fire Department is a small, but important one. The department has even been called out to help rescue wildlife.
“It’s 17 miles to everywhere,” he said, “17 miles to a restaurant, 17 miles to a grocery store, in every direction”
In “the middle of nowhere,” minutes can be the difference between life and death, and Brooks, a five-year veteran of the Carancahua department, is happy to be at the helm to help.
It isn’t an easy job but it was a void that needed to be filled.
“You’re on call essentially 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” he said, “we don’t require anybody to show up. You show up if you can, but most everybody makes a pretty good effort to show up. We had a little grassfire this week and we had eight or nine people show up for a job that would have taken about two. We get really good participation. For the most part, it’s a fun job.”
The hardest thing, he said, is responding to the homes of the people you live around, know, and like.
“Most of them are neighbors. Most of them you know, or somebody that you know, knows them,” he said, “It cuts both ways. Most of the things we go out on have a good outcome. Some don’t. When you’ve got a community like we have that’s largely ‘youth challenged,’ you have a lot of people that are what we call ‘frequent fliers.’ At some point, it’s not going to be good, and then you know those people. You know their kids, their husband, their wife.”
The Carancahua department is a somewhat new one, and has anywhere between 12 and 17 members at any given time, most Brooks’ age or so, although there are some younger members.
“The department was formed in ‘97,” he said, “so it isn’t an old department. Before it was formed, this area was covered by Olivia/Port Alto. They’re six miles away.”
The department that began with a few volunteers and hand-me-down equipment, now sits right outside the gate at the Cape in a nice but modest building with nicer trucks, and eager volunteers. It survives with funding from Emergency Services District 2, as well as fundraisers and donations from the community.
For Brooks, it’s not as much about fighting fires as it’s about helping the community he lives in, in whatever way he is needed. It’s about being part of something that makes a difference, and Brooks is happy to do that with the Carancahua Volunteer Fire Department.
Rate this article:
- Log in to post comments
