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Eleven questions for Ricky Lancaster
I'd say county-wide there's probably 50 fires a year, including brush, structure, and vehicle. The most common is brush fire. Usually structure fires-there's less than a dozen a year and probably half that will be total losses. Usually the majority of the structure fires will come during the cooler weather, the winter time, when people are using wood heat. Through the summer it's very rare to have a structure fire other than one caused by a lightning strike or an accident, like a candle left burning. How long have you been serving here? I've been fire marshall for three years. I've been on the volunteer fire department since 1985. I joined the junior fire department with Warne Fire Department when I was 17 and I just got it in my system; couldn't get it out. When I graduated from high school I wanted to be a truck driver. I don't know why, but I did. I thought I wanted to be a mechanic for a little bit. After I graduated I had been out of school for about three months and the director at that time called me and asked me if I wanted a job working for the ambulance service, the EMS. I went to work for him in September of 1986 and I've been with it ever since. I started out as an ambulance attendant, where all you really got was a little first-aid course, and a driver's license. I started from there and worked my way up. I went to paramedic school in Gainesville, Georgia from 1992- 1993. I worked in Georgia for five years as a paid fireman. What kind of changes have you seen in the county since the Eighties? There's been a lot of growth; a lot more influx of people. The call volume from then until now has probably quadrupled. It used to be very rare. Back then there was one ambulance call a day - now we run four or five. There's just a lot more people. What's the largest fire you've ever battled? The Peachtree School. It burnt many years ago. It was a very big fire and I was very young at the time. I was probably 18 or 19. It was a big operation for this area. There were fire departments from Clay and Cherokee Counties. Lots of fire trucks; lots of people. It went well, especially with totally volunteer departments. That's been fifteen years ago or more. Would you recommend your career? Yeah, it's a good career. You sacrifice a lot of your personal time. You have to leave your family a lot to go do stuff because emergencies come whenever. It's hard to schedule stuff. Like with the EMS, we work a 24- hour shift. Then we're on call for the next 24. If there's an ambulance call in that next 24-hour period, we have to come back to work. So that second day, after you do your 24, it's kind of hard to plan to do anything because you've got to be ready to go all the time. And fires - they happen in the middle of the night or whenever. My family is understanding and has gotten used to me coming and going a lot and that helps, it really does. I come in and usually, throughout my day here, I'm assistant EMS director. I try to help with paperwork. I run ambulance calls. I work on my fire marshall stuff. If I have time that day I do fire inspections, in between running calls and everything else. It's usually always busy for me. If we're not running calls I have other stuff to do. What do you think Clay County needs the most? The EMS, we need to look at, in the future, putting on another crew. Now we're getting so many calls back-to-back-to-back. There was an instance a few weeks ago - we had like five calls in 30 minutes. We only have two trucks, so that puts us in a bind. Towns County was busy so Cherokee County ended up sending some trucks over to help us out. The more people who move in, the busier we get. We've just got to start growing with everything growing around us. This is a fairly new building, correct? We've been in this building going on nine months to a year. It's new. It's a great building. It serves our purpose. Compared to where we used to be stationed in a county building, it's been fantastic. We can keep the trucks inside. We have a kitchen area now. We have bedrooms, we have showers. It's nice. I think, I mean can't speak for the commissioners themselves, but I think that in the next several years if we continue to grow and the county keeps getting bigger, what they would probably want to do is put another station somewhere in another part of the county. Maybe up in Shooting Creek somewhere, so it's not 15 miles to that end of the county. It would kind of divide the county up. What would you say is the toughest part of your job? The hours. The long hours. We work 24 straight hours. We came to work at eight this morning. We don't get off until eight tomorrow morning. It just makes for a long day. Some people don't like to be busy but if you're busy it goes by pretty quickly. It's like going to the doctor's office sometimes and having to sit and wait. Just imagine having been up 24 hours. It's a long day sometimes. After 10 p.m. we can go to bed, and if we get a call we just get up and go. So that works out pretty well, but even if you do go to bed, you're half asleep, because you're always thinking something's going to happen and you'll have to get right back up. I get calls almost every shift at some point. On our last three shifts, we've had to get up at least once every night. The other crew that's backing us up is at home. What we would like to do is get four of us here all the time so if we get two calls we can automatically go. We don't have to come from home. If you're having a heart attack and I've got to come from home, I mean, my partner lives ten miles from town, it's going to be ten or 15 minutes before we get a truck and then come to you. So we just need to look into trying to grow with that aspect of making the service better.How safe would you say Clay County is compared to other counties in the surrounding area? I think the county's very safe. The sheriff's department does a great job. Most of the time when we go out at night on a call, there's always an officer there with us. There's only been a few times in the past I've been uncomfortable in situations but the sheriff's department is usually right there with us after dark or during the daytime if we get somewhere we think there could be a problem or anything. There's not many places like that, but you know where they're at. The deputies are very good. The sheriff will send them up there and they're up there with us. What are your thoughts on the nine firefighters who recently gave their lives in Charleston, South Carolina? That was a pretty big tragedy. ...That would be a very tragic event for any paid or volunteer service. It would be hard to take losing nine guys. I mean, I can't imagine losing one person here, much less nine. It's [always possible that] something like that could happen here. Even though this county is an all-volunteer county, the way I look at it, they are unpaid professionals. We do the same job that paid guys do, except we don't get paid for it. Those guys are drawn to firefighting because they want to help other people. Most of them have been in the fire department for a long time. That's what they do - They're just striving to help their fellow man. A lot of people don't want to see us, but in a time of need, they're glad we're there. It's nice to be able to help people when they're in need. What is your role in Clay County's Fourth of July celebration? I've been working with Gary Slagel. I met with him already and talked. The morning of the fourth, the fire department is going to go up there and wet down a very large area where the fireworks will be shot so if one of the shells was to malfunction, go the wrong way or something, after the dry conditions we've had, we'd be in good shape there. Prior to shooting them, sometime that day I'll have to be up there inspecting all of their wiring and cooking areas to make sure they're safe and that there are no hazards for the public. Then after that we'll get the volunteer fire department up there to help direct traffic and parking. We will have our rescue boat on the water that day all day long. We'll have members alternating. There'll be a lot of boat traffic. We'll try to keep everything going the right way that day. It's one of the busiest days we have, not call-wise, but being prepared for the possibility of what could happen.
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