Feb. 16--It's a quiet afternoon at the CE-Bar fire station on Commons Ford Road, but everyone there knows that at any moment a high-pitched tone could go off, sending firefighters to the scene of a car accident or a fire.
And some of them aren't even paid to be there.
Ken Campbell and Joe Roddy are volunteers with the CE-Bar Volunteer Fire Department, which covers the northern portion of the Westbank.
Campbell, a lawyer when he's not responding to accidents, has been with the department for more than 20 years as both a firefighter and an emergency medical technician. He currently serves as assistant chief. He also volunteers with the Westlake Fire Department, where he serves as a lieutenant.
"It's a great experience, and I would recommend it to anyone," Campbell said of volunteer firefighting.
Roddy, who serves as a captain with CE-Bar, volunteered with the department 12 years ago when he lived across the street from the former fire station.
"I'm not particularly an adrenaline junkie, but where else do you get to work with big, heavy tools that can rip and tear through metal in seconds and run into burning buildings," Roddy said. "There's some cool stuff about that, not your everyday deal."
Roddy said that many volunteers get to put their day job skills to use in the field. He's a physician's assistant for an orthopedic surgeon. While responding to a recent car accident, he told a man who was pinned inside a car that he would stay with him through the ordeal.
"We got him out, and I rode with him to the hospital, and I operated on him after that," Roddy said. "That was kind of fun for me because I got to see him through. I was used to taking care of people that had been hurt, but I never had to deal with them on this end."
Another volunteer, who worked as a teacher, used his fluency in German to calm a German-speaking patient at a recent accident, Roddy said. "Everyone brings different skills, different perspectives."
Volunteering as a firefighter can be a huge time commitment with training and shifts factored in. Roddy and Campbell estimate that they put in about 20 hours a week at the station.
"It's a big time commitment," Roddy said. "We take what you can do. We understand that people have jobs and families and other commitments."
Training to become a firefighter/EMT can take anywhere from a few months to a year, and CE-Bar allows cadets to go at their own pace. The department doesn't require a set number of hours at the station. Still, the number of active volunteers has fallen off over the years as the Westbank area has become more of a bedroom community.
"As we developed into more of a bedroom community and less of a self-supporting community, we had less and less people here during the day," Campbell said, prompting the department to take on more paid staff. "We've lost that volunteerism, and I think it's unfortunate."
For those that don't particularly want to run into burning buildings, there are other opportunities to serve the department, they said. Volunteers also fill support roles, such as helping with computers, administration tasks and a variety of jobs around the station.
Campbell said that his decision to become a volunteer firefighter changed his life.
"I met my wife at a car wreck," he said. "She's a paramedic for the city of Austin."
Professionally, it's taken him in a different direction, too, leading him to represent cities, fire departments and political subdivisions and to volunteer for both the department's board of directors and the board of commissioners for the Emergency Services District 10.
While all firefighters and EMTs have difficult calls and bad outcomes, late nights and early mornings, the volunteers are proud to be serving their neighbors.
"I live in this community, and you see a lot of people that you know on calls," Roddy said. "When you see someone whose life you've saved walking down the street, it's a pretty good feeling."
Copyright 2013 - Austin American-Statesman
