As a self-employed business consultant, Erich K Squire has extensive training and experience in many areas of finance, including developing strategic financial plans based for companies of all sizes. As rewarding as it is to witness companies and individuals grow in wealth, Mr. Squire’s most exciting career has been as a volunteer firefighter with the Ogden Dunes Volunteer Fire Department in Ogden, IN.
It doesn’t matter what your specific duties are as a volunteer in your local fire department. To be successful as a volunteer firefighter, you must stay calm, cool, and collected when facing a life or death situation. At any time, you may need to carry out some of the same emergency response duties and non-emergency tasks as your official firefighting partners.
Why Erich Squire supports volunteers as a firefighter?
There’s nothing more satisfying than the sense of pride and accomplishment volunteer firefighters experience after a call. Saving neighbors, helping communities, protecting properties, and rescuing pets are all a part of being a firefighter. As a volunteer, we have the added responsibility of supporting and helping the first responders in any way we can.
Here is a list of benefits that anyone who becomes a volunteer at their local fire department may expect, says Erich Squire:
You learn new skills such as life rescue techniques, spatial awareness, problem-solving, resiliency, and how to quickly adapt to changing situations. These same skills can be put to good use in a business or other career also.
You make new friends and experience comradery and brotherhood found only in very specific occupations. Everyone depends on the next man or woman to do their job for safety’s sake, and that is a responsibility that Erich Squire doesn’t take lightly.
Becoming an intricate part of a team also opens up new and rewarding opportunities for social interactions with other families. You learn to depend on fellow firefighters for support both in the field and not.
A way to give back to the community. And this is one of the most gratifying feelings you can experience – helping your neighbors to survive and overcome an emergency situation.
The joy of making a real difference. While all volunteers that serve in any way within communities are champions, getting your hands dirty and sweating it out near a raging fire makes you realize just what is truly important – life and love.
Erich Squire has witnessed enough tragic events where families have lost loved ones and everything they own. His heart breaks for each one. But, even just the experience of a residential fire, even when the loss is minimal, can change the way people view life. Coming close to danger or death can quickly put your priorities into perspective.
Depression, shock, anger, fear, sadness, and hopelessness can hit a survivor of a fire, all at once. Often, it is the calming of a person’s fears, the reassuring to families that they will regain what was lost, and the simple act of a compassionate hug that can make all the difference to a fire survivor.
