DUMMERSTON-It was a time after World War II, when the men who came back from the battlefronts around the globe wanted to build things up instead of destroy them.
So, in 1949, four men from Dummerston got together and decided the town needed a fire department. A year later, the West Dummerston Volunteer Fire Department was born.
Thanks to them, the Dummerston Fire Department - known until July as the West Dummerston Volunteer Fire Department - is celebrating its 75th year in continuous operation as a volunteer department.
To celebrate, the department has partnered with the Dummerston Historical Society to create an exhibit of old equipment, uniforms, newspaper clippings, and photographs. The show will be the basis of a celebration/program on Sunday, Oct. 26, at the Historical Society's quarterly meeting.
Retired and current members of the department will also share stories about its history and funding, their training and experiences.
Being part of a rural fire department is good practice for living in a democracy, said Chuck Fish, 89, an author and historian who has served in the Dummerston Fire Department and is on the board of the Historical Society,
"When you think about the benefit of the fire department, the most obvious thing is they protect us if we have a fire, and they give advice on fire safety, and they'll look at your wood stove and so forth," Fish said. "So they're very helpful in general."
But, he added, there's "also a social, almost political dimension to it all."
"People on fire departments learn to cooperate. Now, this is true of all sorts of volunteer organizations, but it's obviously true with the fire department," Fish said. "Over years and years of working together, they cross personal differences and learn to cooperate for the common good."
A volunteer fire department means that no one, not even the chief, is paid. They train hard, work at other jobs, and, when there is an emergency call, they show up.
"We have a really good core group of people who have decided this is their priority," said Dummerston Fire Chief Larry Pratt Jr., "They show up and volunteer their time."
Pratt, 35, has been with the Dummerston Fire Department since the fall of 2020.
On a map, Dummerston is widespread and cut in half by the West River. So the department maintains two stations, one in Dummerston Center and the other in West Dummerston.
Its 28 well-trained men and women volunteer firefighters answer between 230 and 260 calls a year. The department has a yearly operating budget of approximately $118,000.
In the next few months, firefighters are looking forward to the arrival of its latest piece of equipment: a 2,000-gallon tanker to replace one of the department's three fire engines.
"We're replacing the engine with that tanker, which can function as an engine if it needs to if we have another engine that's down," Pratt said. The department also has a brush truck and a utility vehicle.
The town is paying the $469,000.
"And that's a cheap truck," Pratt said. "The new engines today are right around $1 million."
The tanker is important because hydrants are scarce in rural areas - fire ponds can dry up, and water is always needed to put out fires.
Expanding beyond extinguishing
Going into flame-engulfed buildings is only a small part of what the fire department actually does. Last year, for example, Dummerston did not have a single structure fire.
Still, the department provided mutual aid for structure fires to other departments on 18 occasions, according to the Dummerston Annual Town Report.
It also took care of 13 trees downed over wires and attended 31 automobile accidents. It was called for three vehicle fires, four fuel spills, and 16 illegal-burn brush fires.
The department also answered 120 medical calls.
"I would say 90% of our department has some sort of state license for medical response," Pratt said. "That ranges from Vermont Emergency First Responder, which is basically just first aid, CPR, all the way up to [emergency medical technicians]."
He described the Dummerston Fire Department as "all hazards."
"We do flooded basements, chimney fires, structure fires, motor vehicle accidents, lifts, assists - you name it," Pratt said, "We've done lockouts, where people lock themselves out of their houses. There's carbon monoxide, there's electrical hazards, trees in wires and wires down, traffic control. There's a wide variety of what we do."
A family calling
Being a part of the fire department means being part of a tight-knit community. Often, it is family affair; many are second- and third-generation firefighters.
Travis Bristol, 56, for example, has served with the Dummerston Fire Department for 24 years. The third-generation firefighter started with the former South Newfane/Williamsville Fire Department when he was just 13 years old.
His first fire call in 1981 came when that department responded to a massive barn fire at the Scott Farm on Dutton Farm Road in Dummerston.
"I was 13, and I jumped on a truck, and nobody kicked me off," Bristol said.
"It's just a way to help out the community, I guess," he said. "I'm not as active as I used to be, that's for sure, but I am a trustee and do what I can. It's more of a young person's kind of a thing."
His son, Colby Bristol, a senior at Brattleboro Union High School, was just named Vermont State Firefighters' Association Youth Firefighter of the Year.
Elizabeth "Lizzie" Hickin has been with the Dummerston Fire Department for almost seven years. Her father and grandfather were also firefighters in the department.
"I grew up in Dummerston," Hickin said. "My grandfather actually moved here, and my dad was raised here, and I've been in the area a long time. I don't know if my grandfather was one of the original founders [of the department], but he served, and then my father was a firefighter for a little bit. I actually started my firefighter career in Ludlow, and now I'm on the Dummerston department."
She said she is honored to be part of such a historic organization.
"Just four or five guys got together and started it, and pretty quickly got a lot of people involved," Hickin said. "They said, 'Hey, there's people that are going to need help. We don't have anything to currently help them. Let's solve this problem.'"
(Her story is is backed up by a 1951 report in the Brattleboro Reformer, headlined "W. Dummerston Fire Unit Founded on Determination," which describes how six men got together in 1950, "kicked in $50 apiece, and decided [to] buy a truck.")
"And it's grown from there," Hickin said. "They built one of the first trucks in someone's garage, like, piece by piece. They built it themselves. That's very, very cool. And that truck won a ton of awards at parades. I think it's incredible that so many people, through over 75 years, have continued to choose to show up to serve their community."
Recently, at the large fire in August that destroyed the storage shed and retail area of Dwight Miller Orchard, Hickin was one of the first firefighters on the scene.
"We pulled up and stretched the hand line," Hickin said, referring to the hose. "And we were waiting for more water. So me and another firefighter tried to knock down the fire, but it was pretty well involved by the time we got there.
"It takes a lot of water to put out a fire like that. So we got there and set up and waited for water and got ready for when the tanker started coming in," she continued.
"You kind of just help wherever it is needed. There was a brush fire across the street, so I helped put the brush fire out. And then more and more engines and tankers start showing up."
Firefighters often work together in dangerous situations, Hickin pointed out. It requires an earned sense of trust.
"There are bonds that are formed during the situations you are in," she said. "You have to have a lot of trust in the people that you're working with, and that carries over into day-to-day life."
A fire department "becomes an extended family, and that's very impactful and memorable, more so than the actual events that we go to," Hickin said. "It's not about the danger. It's about people getting help to the people who need it."
An EMS pioneer
Bess Richardson, 88, a retired emergency room and cardiac nurse, was one of the first women to join the Dummerston Fire Department. She won the Vermont State Firefighters' Association's award as Rescue Worker of the Year in 1984. She served on Dummerston's medical rescue team for approximately 15 years.
"We had a very active rescue squad, and we went out with the fire department on all their calls," Richardson remembered. "So I was working full-time, and we have five kids, and they were all home through a lot of this, and then I get rolled out of bed at two o'clock in the morning for rescue calls. Then I had to continue my work day."
She recalls taking some flak back then for being female.
"One of the other departments was complaining about women coming on the fire department, and one of our guys turned around and looked at them and said, 'Let me tell you, if you're on the ground looking up, you're going to want her looking down.'"
Richardson spent a lot of her time teaching others how to be an EMT.
"I was what they called an EMT-I, which was an intermediate, because I could start IVs out on the road," Richardson said. "I was up to the level of defibrillating people out on the road."
Automobile accidents made up a considerable number of her calls, and the scenes could be grisly, especially before a federal law mandating seat belts in all motor vehicles took effect in 1968.
"Route 5 used to have a lot of accidents," she said. "There were no seat belt laws when I started, and we used to get a lot of very bad accidents."
Responding to an accident could have an impact on the responders.
"You sat down and cried," Richardson said. "We used to have meetings here after a very traumatic event for people to decompress and get their feelings out."
She was affected by "a horrible motor vehicle accident in which three people died."
"And there was was a darn horn on the car blowing over that whole scene until somebody finally grabbed the wire and pulled the wire so it would stop that eerie, eerie sound. That bothered us, all of us for a very long time, and I don't go by that spot but I think of it. They were all young people, you know, very young, and they just didn't make it. Nobody had a seat belt on."
Another reason for bad accidents back then was that offices used to have Christmas and New Year's parties - with alcohol.
"That stopped when it became the responsibility of the person providing the alcohol," she said. "Companies no longer allowed drinking on their property."
Insurance benefit
In rural areas, having a homegrown and active fire department lowers home insurance costs.
"A big portion of your homeowner's insurance rate is set upon what is called an ISO rating," Pratt said.
The Insurance Services Office (ISO) rates a community's fire suppression capabilities based on a community fire department's training, equipment, and the local water supply. A better ISO rating generally leads to lower homeowners insurance premiums because it indicates a lower risk of fire damage.
"We are working very hard to get our ISO rating down in town," Pratt said. "Some of the things we can do for that is bringing up our amount of responders."
The chief said that "very often, previously, we were just seeing two or three responders to a call. If we can get that to six, that drops us down a number. Then it depends on how fast we respond."
"And then another big portion of your ISO rating is how close the nearest fire station is, which is what comes into play with why we have two stations," Pratt said.
Fundraising, recruiting are constant tasks
Raising money to fund the fire department is a big part of the job. Dummerston's is known for its big pancake, biscuit, and sausage gravy breakfast on the morning of the annual Apple Pie Festival, for its fishing derby in the pond next to the Dummerston Center station (they stock it for the derby), and for its chicken barbecue at the KOA Campground on Route 5. It also does a year-end fundraising appeal by mail.
Essentially, the firefighters raise about $40,000 a year that way, Pratt said. But fundraising has become too time intensive.
"We're trying to get away from some of it," he said. "Fundraising didn't used to be such a big issue when we were running 50 calls a year. Now we're running 260 calls a year. It's a little daunting to keep going with the same amount of fundraising, because it's often the same people showing up for the fundraisers as all the calls."
The department applies for grants as well.
"We've been pretty successful in previous years," Pratt said, noting that the department has received grants for turnout gear and a self-contained breathing apparatus.
"We haven't been as successful in the last probably seven years," he continued, noting that funders "take into consideration how much you've already received. So they like to spread it out to other departments."
"I think shortly we'll be on another loop where we're successful again," he said.
Finding and training new volunteers is always part of the program.
"There's so much training," Bristol said. "That's what makes it hard these days. I think that's why you don't get as many members anymore. It requires almost 200 hours of training - even volunteer fire departments require that."
The departments usually pay for the training. "But you have to put the time in, nights and weekends, and nowadays there's a way bigger call volume from the old days," he said.
But then there is always that beautiful sense of community. It's priceless.
"I love to give back to my community - and somebody's got to do it," Pratt said.
The Dummerston Historical Society's quarterly meeting and program "Celebrating Dummerston Fire Department's 75th Anniversary" takes place Sunday, Oct. 26, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Society's Schoolhouse in Dummerston Center. The exhibit will be open at the schoolhouse on the first and third Sundays of the month from 1 to 3 p.m. Admission is free.
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.