A Case for Supporting Your Volunteer Fire Department by Michael Valliant dwindling number of volunteers to keep fire departments running. In the state of Maryland, there are 365 volunteer fire departments. Roughly 25,000 volunteers respond to hundreds of thousands of calls for fire, rescue and emergency medical services each year. They are always on call. Narrowing those numbers down, in 2019, Easton Volunteer Fire Department responded to 1,099 calls. Each of those calls has a person, people or family in need at the other end of it.
It is not a stretch to say that community life on the Eastern Shore depends upon volunteer fire departments. They save lives, they show up in our darkest hours, they put their own lives at risk going into burning buildings and houses. Those are the end results that we can picture. But fire departments and the work they do for and in their towns actually help to create the sense of community that we know and love on the Shore. It takes time, effort, training, money and support on the part of a
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