They help the public, but they’re now asking the public to help them.
A Montgomery County Council budget vote Wednesday could result in the Hyattstown Volunteer Fire Department having less staff and longer response times.
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WATCH HERE“We have a petition out, we’ve got over the weekend we had about 200 people that have signed the petition, we need emails sent to the county council and on Wednesday we need people to show up at the council and express their need for the service,” said Hyattstown Volunteer Fire Department Chief Jeff Gross.
Gross has volunteered there for 32 years, watching the surrounding Clarksburg area grow and seeing traffic (and crashes) increase on nearby I-270.
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On Wednesday, the Montgomery County Council will consider a budget that could remove and reassign the career personnel, leaving only volunteers and not enough of them, according to Gross.
“Right now we try to respond [to emergencies] in about a six minute window,” Gross said. “If this station is not staffed regularly, the response times will probably double.”
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Just last November, Montgomery County dedicated the new Clarksburg Fire Station, a county facility staffed by career firefighters and paramedics. It is also on Frederick Road, three and a half miles away.
The Hyattstown Volunteer Fire Department has a robust campaign underway, trying to inform the public about the impact of potential changes.
The Hyattstown Volunteer Fire Department is not alone in this, as volunteer firefighting has been declining since the late 1980’s, U.S. government statistics show.
