GREGG COUNTY, Texas — Editor's Note: This is the first part in a two-part series about the struggles of East Texas volunteer firefighters.
Chris Jackson is playing a double duty job to make the community around him a safer place. Not only is he the fire chief for the Judson Fire Department in northern Gregg County, but he's also a driver at the Longview Fire Department.
“We’re still a fairly new fire department. We started in 2006," Jackson said. "It started out as a volunteer fire department and we’ve kind of grown over time. Now, we’re both a combination department. So we have volunteers but we’re also staffed as well."
In northern Gregg County, there's a hangar that houses the Judson Fire Department.
Within Jackson's fire department, he manages 30 firefighters. On his days off from Longview Fire, he's at the Judson Fire Department.
"We work 24/48 (hours) so I’m on duty for 24 hours and I’m off for two days," Jackson said.
Call volume in this growing area of Gregg County is going up which is leading volunteer fire departments to find people who Jackson said are willing to put in the time and effort and do the training to meet the demand of all the calls.
"There is certainly a shortage of volunteers. We have to work around someone’s personal life or busy work schedules to get them trained to the same capacity as our counterparts that are full time," Jackson said. "We are a volunteer department, but we operate as what’s called an ESD, so we are an emergency services district – so we are tax funded."
That funding covers the equipment as well as staffing. Outside of that, Jackson said any training the firefighters go through is paid through grants.
"The grant process allows us to get free education and training so that is a huge help to volunteer fire departments," Jackson said.
Judson Fire maxes out its grant for its firefighters to train at Kilgore College.
"Once you come on as a volunteer, we want to send you to the full academy. We pay for our members to go through the fire academy and EMT school," Jackson said.
This type of funding allows more volunteer firefighters to get on board with training and getting on the job sooner.
"There are some grants that have become more available. One of which is the funding through the forestry service has increased," Jackson said.
Sean Dugan with the Texas A&M Forest Service said Texas has awarded over $238 million in grants to fire departments, including training for 73,000 firefighters since the volunteer firefighter training program started.
"There’s different programs, there’s some for volunteer and paid departments," Dugan said.
With increased funding and training opportunities for new recruits, Jackson said this is a prime opportunity for volunteer firefighters to work at municipal fire departments like Jackson himself.
"We can train them, we can educate them, and then in turn if they would like to use the training and education that we provide they can go full time," Jackson said. "That’s one of our goals. Most of our department not only works here part time, but they also work full time at other departments too."
Part two will continue the conversation of the struggles volunteer fire departments are going through to keep rural areas served across the state. Help from local ESDs and training assistance from local city fire departments could help alleviate some of those issues.