Four call firefighters representing the Fire Department recently graduated from the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy Call/Volunteer Recruit Firefighter Class #109, in a ceremony held at Lynnfield Middle School.
Michael Mansfield, Brenden Henehan, Bethanie Dudley, and Timothy Cogswell were among 57 graduates representing other surrounding cities and towns. Also present during last week’s ceremony to give remarks were state Fire Marshal Jon Davine, and Call/Volunteer Program Coordinator Christopher W. Norris. Todd Angilly, the national anthem singer for the Boston Bruins, sang the national anthem during the opening. Toward the end of the ceremony, Dudley, the spokesperson for those in the Lynnfield group, gave a speech to commemorate her fellow firefighters’ accomplishments.
“To everyone here today, I’m proud of you,” Dudley said. “After months of hard work, we are now officially firefighters, and we’ll have the honor of being called upon to help those in need.”
Dudley also talked about the sacrifice call firefighters have to make.
“Call and volunteer firefighters respond to emergencies despite working other full-time jobs,” Dudley said. “The choice to sacrifice what little free time they have left truly signifies what it means to show up for others.”
The new recruitment comes after Fire Chief Glenn Davis opened up about losing a significant number of call firefighters at a select board meeting last month, as well as staffing issues when calls come in after hours, a problem that’s been ongoing for a couple of years now.
In a recent select board meeting, Davis talked about how recruitment is one of his goals for the department for the upcoming year.
“Continued attrition and turnover in the fire department is making it challenging to maintain the call division,” Davis said. “A majority number of calls are being handled by a diminishing number of firefighters, causing burnout.”
Davis also talked about using mutual aid to get help for the department from surrounding cities and towns during times when there are not enough people to take on calls. However, at another select board meeting a year ago, Davis said that it is a “delayed response”, that he does not know where the responders are coming from, and that responses from nearby communities such as Danvers and Swampscott “are long, unacceptable response times.”
In a recent Letter to the Editor sent to The Lynnfield Weekly News, Finance Committee Member Alexis Leahy described the recent fire at 5 Stafford Road and the possible downsides of relying too much on both the call model and mutual aid response.
“If there is an emergency after 6:30 p.m., then we are not modeled to respond to a second emergency without relying on another town to cover,” Leahy wrote. “The call for help on 5 Stafford Road came shortly after 8 p.m., and the response to this fire relied on a call model that can delay response times in the evenings and overnight.”
Anne Marie Tobin contributed to this report.
