{"id":81533,"date":"2024-09-30T11:32:14","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T16:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=81533"},"modified":"2024-09-30T11:32:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T16:32:16","slug":"hays-fire-seeks-future-recruits-and-volunteerism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=81533","title":{"rendered":"Hays Fire seeks future recruits and volunteerism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By RORY MOORE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiger Media Network<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hays Fire Department hosted an explorer\u2019s program Sunday at Fire Station No. 3 that included a lecture from first responders and a tour of the fire station. The program was aimed at high school students interested in becoming firefighters or other first responder positions as part of the department\u2019s ongoing efforts to find new recruits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deputy Fire Chief Shane Preston led the program to engage with its young attendees and educate them about what it takes to be a firefighter and all the hoops to jump through when training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe main goal of this program is to get the youth interested in first responders and what we do,\u201d he said. “Hopefully, we get to keep them and bring them on as firefighters. That\u2019s the end goal, but if they choose not to go into firefighting, they have the opportunity to learn about EMS or law enforcement or something else of the services that we provide, and that\u2019s really the main thing.  It\u2019s just to educate them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the youth involved with the program are usually introduced to emergency services by family members who have worked in these positions themselves or are encouraged to do so by others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome of them are just kind of coming in because their parents said, \u2018Here\u2019s something you\u2019re going to do. Here\u2019s an activity you\u2019re gonna do to get out of the house.\u2019 So, we\u2019ll take them, and we\u2019ll teach them a bunch of stuff, too,\u201d Preston said. \u201cHopefully, we get a fire built in them if that\u2019s what they wanna do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, many fire departments around the country have faced a shortage of recruits caused by the lack of interest in firefighting, and this program was created to address the Hays Fire Department\u2019s situation with these issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been doing a lot of job openings and volunteer spots,\u201d Preston said. “We try to do a lot of advertising. Sometimes, we\u2019re not very successful with that, but we do word of mouth. We try to work with people and other organizations in the community to see if they know somebody that might be interested.  A lot of people don\u2019t know that [the] Hays Fire Department has a volunteer program, and that\u2019s something we\u2019re working to change by getting that out there more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preston believes that hosting this program benefits the community by incentivizing people to become more engaged in helping their peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think one of the things that has changed over time is the lack of volunteerism in communities, not just Hays, but also smaller towns,\u201d he said. \u201cNot as many people are getting involved in their communities locally, and this is a way to help that by keeping that interest alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By RORY MOORE Tiger Media Network The Hays Fire Department hosted an explorer\u2019s program Sunday at Fire Station No. 3 that included a lecture from… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":81538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,11],"tags":[15860,15859,7886,15700],"class_list":["post-81533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-news","category-news","tag-firefighters","tag-hays-fire","tag-hays-fire-department","tag-rory-moore"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/fire-fighter-recruit-005.jpg?fit=1307%2C782&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81533"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81543,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81533\/revisions\/81543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}