Volunteer fire departments are a vital part of rural life. The volunteers play an important role in assisting others and are frequently the first to respond to the scene of a fire, accident or other emergency situation. Each of the county’s volunteer departments — Carthage, Anderson Township, Raleigh/Mays, Posey Township, Rushville Township, Jackson Township, Manilla and Glenwood have qualified medical and fire personnel who are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In recent years a number of changes have been required of volunteer departments.

Recently, Anderson Township Trustee Karen Jenkins requested that an evaluation be conducted of the volunteer fire department in her jurisdiction.

According to the department’s training and safety instructor, Steve McCorkle, that undertaking was recently completed.

“The purpose of the evaluation was to find out where some of the hearts of the members were. The committee set up by Jenkins met, and after reviewing the findings it was decided that we (as a department) needed to start over and reestablish pride and credibility within the department,” McCorkle said.

Three key areas were defined and will be stressed during upcoming training sessions: teamwork, communication within the department and an effort to restore the trust of the community.

Once the perimeters were set and a direction for the department was defined each of the members were asked to reevaluate their reasons for wanting to be on the department and to resubmit an application.

“We did not fire anyone, we did not let anyone go. The department just did not accept a few of the applications,” Rick Disbro said.

Currently, 14 members make up the Anderson Township Volunteer Fire Department. It is anticipated that number will increase to 20 or 25 firefighters in coming months.

Since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, a number of training measures have been updated.

According to McCorkle, roughly 80 percent of the training is currently conducted in-house.

“We are in the process of lining up outside instructors for some future training exercises,” McCorkle said.

In the past 20 years items found and used in homes have changed.

According to Disbro and McCorkle, 25 years ago the majority of fires were considered “hot” when they were burning at 1,200 degrees. Due to the evolution of plastics and other items the average temperature of most fires now reaches 1,800 degrees. That aspect alone has required a major change in the equipment used by today’s firefighters.

“Not everyone in the department will be required to pull a hose and battle a fire. There are a number of other equally important aspects of being a firefighter that we need to fill in the department,” McCorkle said.