Fire Dept. welcomes five new members

By ALEX STRICKLAND — Bigfork Eagle

The Bigfork Fire Department welcomed five new members to the mostly volunteer squad last week, helping to fill a long-standing need for more firefighters.

Though the five are still in a training phase, they are on call and available to respond to any calls, so long as they are under supervision from a qualified veteran of the department.

"The influx of five really helps with our immediate need," Fire Chief Chuck Harris said. "But we're always looking for more."

The benefit of having a larger force has less to do with having more people for every call than it does with having more people available at tough times when not many members can respond.

"A lot of the time during the day you only get two or three people," Harris said. "It's because these people have day jobs."

Harris said that for large calls, such as house fires and wrecks, the volunteers drop what they're doing and show up in droves, but said he realizes that's not possible for many firefighters.

The new firefighters are Tucker Scott, Amanda Archer, John Beaubien, Chad Oster and Mike Czeck.