Lavalette Volunteer Fire Department

About

Chief- John C Maynard J.R.
Deputy Chief- Jason Cazad
Captains: Kevin Simmons, Lee Dunfee, John Board
Lieutenants: Kody Baumann & David Edgar

Story

The Lavalette Volunteer Fire Department was established March 27th, 1959. The deptartment started with a group of men that were tired of seeing the citizens of Lavalette lose their homes and love ones to fire without being able to help, and relying on either Huntington Fire Department or the Wayne Volunteer Fire Department to respond. The original fire dept started in a two story single bay door building, which still stands to this day, approximately 500 ft north of the main building now at the intersection of 152 and 8th street road. They started with one fire truck, and then later were able to purchase another fire truck. Instead of Pagers the fire deptartment worked with “fire phones”. This worked by one person calling the fire department to report a fire. Another person called the first person on his department member list, then continued calling the other members from his list. Then that member called the department members on his list. This cycle went on untill evry department member had been called. They had two fire trucks parked side by side in this building to where you could barely move. In the early 1970's the fire department purchased the land that the fire dept. is currently located now from a gentleman named J. A. Rowe from donations and fund raisers. During this time the membership was able to grow as volunteers got on the department. The department was able to purchase fire trucks as donations came in from the community. In the late 70's or early 1980's the department was able to purchase pagers. These pagers would alert the firefighters from a dispatcher to let them know of a call they had. In the mid 1980's the department was able to build another building located beside the J. A. Rowe building through Federal Grant money. This building had to be built to house the fire trucks due to there size, plus due to the amount of equipment that the fire department has. Now since the enhanced 911 system has gone into effect. Due to the large amount of calls we have had , we went to a paid EMS crew. The crew stays at the station during the day from 6:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., and from 6:00 p.m. until the next morning 6:00 a.m. We allow the crew to stay at there homes with their families, unless they're not a full member of the department, then they must stay at the station. There are still some days that we may not have a crew simply because everyone has their full time jobs elsewhere, and they work at the department on their days off. The fire calls are all strictly volunteer, from volunteer firefighters.to this day it is still hard to get volunteers out on all calls due to the lack of interest, and the current members work schedules with their full time jobs and family activities. Currently, in 2006, the fire department has 4 fire trucks, 2 ambulances, with the assistance from the county commission, a blazer donated from the forestry, a retired Wayne County police cruiser, used a command vehicle, a rescue boat, and a 7x14 cargo trailer for haz-mat and confined rescue equipment. One thing that we can say is that the community of Lavalette has always been there to support the fire department, and without the donations from our community, the hard dedication of its past and present members, and still some fund raisers we would not have what we have now. John Maynard, Chief, member since 1982

Read more: http://www.myspace.com/station300#ixzz0uZfyqU00

Mission

Help the community. Firefighters and EMS crews.

Impressum

Chief- John M. 301
Deputy Chief- Jason 302
Captains: Rob 303, Lee 304, Kevin S. 305
Lieutenants: John B. 306 & Kody 307
Firefighters: Kevin C. 364, David 367, Jim 354, Donnie 350, Ashley 371, Cameron 358, Chris 370, Carrie 362, Aaron 357, Patrick 390, Sammie 355
Cadet(s): Johnathan M. 391, Johnathan C. 353