This is an installment in a monthslong reporting series on Southwest and Southside Virginia’s volunteer fire departments and rescue squads, the challenges they face, and the solutions they’re finding to serve their communities and remain the backbone of rural emergency response.
In many Southwest and Southside communities, a handful of volunteers are the only thing standing between a neighbor’s call for help and catastrophe.
Volunteer fire departments and rescue squads are the backbone of the emergency response system in our rural region. Paid departments and healthcare strongholds are few and far between, existing primarily in urban centers.
At the more than 250 departments across our region, volunteers always answer the call. Yet they’re fighting a quiet crisis of declining volunteerism, evolving demands on the emergency response system, and often insufficient resources from funds to firetrucks — all of which compound and make it harder for first responders to do their job.
Cardinal News is diving into the complex world of volunteer emergency response in a monthslong project designed to find and amplify the solutions volunteers are using to address these challenges.
In March, we surveyed our region’s firefighters and neighbors and learned that challenges are widespread, and that no department is alone in adapting to meet today’s needs of rural Virginia.
We heard from volunteers experiencing burnout due to thin rosters and more frequent medical emergency calls, departments struggling to keep pace with aging equipment on winding rural roads, and captains who feel left out of conversations with their local governments and misunderstood by their neighbors.
In urban areas where policy discussions and news coverage are concentrated, people rely on paid first responders and quick responses. They might be unfamiliar with the volunteer model of emergency response. It is largely left out of policy conversations, underreported by media, and invisible to neighbors until they have to dial 911.
Cardinal wants to change that and is participating in a program led by the Solutions Journalism Network to learn more about the type of journalism that seeks out solutions to tough challenges. We are receiving training along with 11 other nonprofit and public media outlets across the country. All will take on a solutions journalism project, and our plan at Cardinal is to hand a megaphone to volunteers — and their community partners and government representatives — with innovative ideas.
Solutions journalism combines reporting on problems with reporting on potential and existing solutions.
You may have seen this approach in Cardinal’s coverage before — like this story about improving chronic absenteeism in schools — but this upcoming project will be our newsroom’s first long-term solutions series focused on one topic.
We hope that this coverage leaves you with information about what’s working and energy to make a difference where you can.
When communities have information about what can be done better, inaction is harder to defend.
Cardinal News isn’t coming up with the solutions to the problems faced by volunteer fire departments in our region. We’re looking at what’s working and how it’s working, along with its limitations and its impact.
What to expect
Starting in June, you can expect to see stories and videos every month through the end of the year.
Emergency response services sit at the intersection of public health, rural economic vitality, workforce development, civic infrastructure and more, making them a crucial part of understanding rural Virginia today and where it’s headed tomorrow. Multiple Cardinal reporters will participate in this project, so that our coverage can span communities across our region.
We’ll feature communities throughout Southwest and Southside Virginia with stories that include thorough research, healthy skepticism, careful contextualization and balanced perspectives.
In June, we will show you a behind-the-scenes look at Virginia’s first-ever statewide training symposium for first responders, and take a deep dive into high-school and college training programs that bolster a first responder workforce.
Our goal is to translate solutions into actionable, accessible stories that explore the challenges of volunteer emergency services, and reach the decision-makers with the power to address them at scale.
Also, we will introduce you to the local firefighters making a difference and take you behind the scenes of how their departments serve communities.
In the end, we hope to create a public understanding of what volunteer departments are facing so that community members have the information they need to show up differently — as potential recruits, as advocates at budget hearings, as donors to local departments, as voters who ask candidates the right questions.
Grace Mamon and Emma Malinak are the lead reporters for this project. If you have questions, tips or feedback, reach out to grace@cardinalnews.org and emma@cardinalnews.org.
