Jonathan Hollis always knew that he wanted to be a firefighter.
“I’ve always wanted to volunteer,” said Hollis, a senior art major at the University of Mississippi. “Ever since I was a little kid, I just loved the red trucks. I love helping people – being able to see someone at their worst moment and being able to help them a little bit is a really big deal. A lot of us really like doing that.”
Originally from Dallas, Hollis has been volunteering at Lafayette County Fire Department for seven years. He is this year’s Firefighter of the Year for the department.
“Volunteering is very rewarding,” Hollis said. “I have friends that I would have absolutely never met otherwise. All my roommates now, I’ve met through the county fire department.”
Hollis has had to learn to balance working as a volunteer and being a student. Because volunteers are constantly on call, this is a difficult task.
“With being a student and being a volunteer, some of the hardest things that we have to do are answer calls that are early in the morning,” he said. “You finish without enough time to go back to bed and you are going to have to be up. You might have a test or an 8 o’clock class, and it’s just rough.”
A particular challenge that Hollis remembers from his first years as a volunteer is learning to remain calm during a call.
“Definitely your first few years are very challenging,” Hollis said. “You have lights around you, sirens around you, and when that tone drops, you want to drop everything and go. It’s very difficult to train yourself to calm down. You have to realize that they’ve been putting out fires long before you got here and they’re going to keep doing it after you leave – it’s going to be OK.”
One of Hollis’s most memorable moments was when a tornado came through the Industrial Park, near the station, in February 2008. They were first on the scene to the damaged Caterpillar Inc. building.
“We actually watched the tornado touch down at Caterpillar, and watched it go across the field through the houses,” he said. “We were first on the scene to Caterpillar to check on people because the whole building was destroyed.”
Matt Defore, a criminal justice graduate student from Jackson, is also a volunteer firefighter. He has been working at the department for the last 15 months.
“I knew I wanted to get involved in public service after I graduated, but I was really eager to get involved now and get some experience serving the public,” Defore said. “So I looked into volunteering and when I found out more about it, I was really interested in becoming a member.”
Defore distinctly remembers arriving at his first major fire.
“Pulling up to the first structure fire was really memorable for me,” he said. “I didn’t have any experience with fire before this. Most people don’t ever see a house completely on fire. I had all my training leading up to that, but actually seeing it in front of you is very different.”
The biggest challenges with being a volunteer firefighter involve time and money, he said.
“As volunteers, we use our own personal vehicles to respond to calls, so that costs us a good amount of gas money and wear and tear on our cars,” Defore said. “In addition to that, the hours that we spend on calls are on our time, unpaid. Last year I had about 75 hours on fire scenes, and a good bit more than that including training – probably close to 200 hours total.”
However, Defore says that it is all worth it.
“Using your own time and money to be on the fire department is certainly a challenge, but by all means it is worth every minute and every dollar as far as I am concerned,” he said. “It’s exciting, I’ve met a lot of great people and I’ve learned a lot about myself – and fires.”
Larry McKinney, deputy chief and training officer for the Lafayette County Fire Department, has worked closely with the 25 or so student volunteers at the department.
“A lot of our students are really enthusiastic,” McKinney said. “The students have more free time than the rest of us who work. Many times the folks that are not students may not be able to make a call, but that’s when the students really come in handy. They may have free time in between classes so they can go and help on fire calls that way.”
Training is intense, McKinney said. All volunteers must go through Volunteer Certification, which includes 72 hours of classroom work and eight hours at the Mississippi Fire Academy in Jackson. In the classroom, the volunteers learn skills from knot tying to hose rolling.
“The class itself consists of about 80 hours, but actually we do a lot of additional training,” McKinney said. “So when they get done with Volunteer Certification, they have about 100 hours. It’s a good bit of training.”
Douglass Sullivan-González, dean of the UM Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, has been volunteering for the Lafayette County Fire Department for eight years.
“Student volunteers provide the bulk of the hard grunt work that has to be done at a fire scene,” Sullivan-González said. “We need constant help with the hoses and the cleanup, and many of them are invaluable. We do miss the students dearly during the winter vacation months and during the summer months, two times when we have a large number of structure and grass fires.”
Sullivan-González thinks it is important for students to get involved.
“Students always need to plug into their community, and now is the time while they are building important skill sets as young adults,” he said. “Volunteer firefighting provides a great way to help the community that nurtures our university.”
Both Defore and Hollis encourage other students to volunteer.
“If you are interested in volunteering, you should definitely do it,” Defore said. “It’s a great way to get experience and if you like it, you’re going to enjoy every minute of it.”
“I would absolutely encourage other students to try to be a volunteer firefighter in Lafayette County,” Hollis said. “It’s a very rewarding thing; you have friendships that are bonding that last forever. When you go to very traumatic situations and very hard events, it’s hard on everyone. Your friends are there for you in ways that other people just don’t understand.”
For Lafayette County Fire Department volunteer and donation information, call 662-232-2880 or visit http://www.lafayettecountyfd.org.
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