You may have heard them on the radio, seen them online, or up near the tree tops on your daily commute.
Horry County Fire Rescue hopes its new ad campaign will help more people find their calling as volunteer firefighters.
The department received a federal grant last year to pay for new equipment, and now it uses some leftover money for advertising. The grant only permits them to recruit volunteers.
“What they do is put more firefighters on the scene of an emergency incident,” Capt. Mark Nugent said, explaining the role of volunteer firefighters.
He said the campaign is already working. “For lack of better words they’ve blown up the recruitment office’s computer.”
The department received 71 applications over the past few weeks.
While the grant money is only for volunteers, Nugent said there is a long-term benefit. “They can become a volunteer, they can get some of that training done,” Nugent said, “And then there’s a track that they can become a career person.”
We asked if volunteers could help cut down on some of the overtime issues the department has faced. Nugent replied, “It doesn’t really play into the overtime part of it, but it definitely puts more people on the scene.”
He told News13 in December part-time employees could help with those overtime issues. HCFR announced at the end of last year it wanted to fill 23 part-time positions: thirteen as firefighter/medics, and ten as strictly paramedics.
A round of applications closed Monday night at 5:00 p.m. The department received three applications for the part-time firefighter/medic positions. They received six part-time paramedic applications.
Nugent said the 13 positions in the budget for part-time firefighter/medic are currently filled. HCFR needs to fill three or four positions of the 10 available paramedic part-time openings, according to Nugent.
The department also received 50 total applications for full-time positions: 25 applications for firefighter/paramedic, a position that closed yesterday to new apps, and 25 applications for firefighter/EMT, a position that will remain open through May.
