Culver volunteers help in emergencies

Published 12:00 am Saturday, November 30, 2013

Nancy and Hilario Diaz stand outside the Culver Fire Department and the old ambulance Nancy uses as a support vehicle for fire scenes. The couple has volunteered at the department since 1993. "We work at our paid jobs so we can afford to volunteer," Nancy said. (ORIG / 11-23-13 / Joe Kline / The Bulletin)

CULVER — Last Saturday morning was going to be Hilario and Nancy Diaz’s day to sleep in.

Instead, at around 4:30 a.m. their bedside pagers sounded — someone, somewhere in Culver, needed their help.

In the 20 years since they started volunteering with Jefferson County Fire District No. 1, the sound of the pagers at all hours of the day and night has become a familiar sound at the Diaz home, “the song of my people,” as Nancy describes it.

During those 20 years, they’ve taken two vacations, though one was paired with a firefighter training conference in Washington, D.C. Both serve as elected, unpaid members of the Culver City Council and work full time, Hilario at Warm Springs Forest Products, and Nancy as director of Big Brothers Big Sisters for Jefferson County. Nancy mentors one young boy through Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Hilario two.

Hilario, 58, said responding to emergencies takes a bit more out of him than it did when he was younger, but he’s rarely tired.

With just eight or nine volunteers available to answer the call, he doesn’t feel he has a choice.

“Sometimes, I get home and get ready for dinner, the pager goes off, and I just leave dinner,” he said. “You feel obligated that you need to respond. If I don’t go, who will?”

Nancy, 57, was the first to sign up for volunteer duty, in 1992, about five years after the couple moved to Culver. Hilario joined her a few months later.

Culver’s small population means when the pager sounds, volunteers are often being called to the home of someone they know. In late 2001, volunteer fire captain Steve Roe was first on the scene to the train vs. vehicle crash that killed Roe’s wife and three of their four children.

Though the pair’s volunteer experience hasn’t been nearly as tragic as the Roe episode, Nancy said it’s emotionally draining to see friends and neighbors experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives. If they didn’t both understand what the job involves, Nancy said it would almost certainly be a strain on their marriage.

“We have calls that are really, really, really hard,” Nancy said.

Asthma forced Nancy to ease back on responding to fire calls in recent years, but she still responds to medical emergencies and helps keep volunteers supplied with food and water on extended calls. Hilario continues to put in hundreds of hours in training each year, and has repeatedly won the department’s “First Alarm Award” for responding to more calls than any other volunteer.

Finding volunteers has become a struggle for the department over the years. Job prospects are limited in Jefferson County, and Culver still hasn’t recovered from the closure of the Seaswirl boat plant in 2007, Nancy said, the biggest employer in Culver for three decades and the day job for many of the fire department’s most dedicated volunteers.

Hilario said though there are many people in the community who would like to help, they just don’t have the time to keep up with the training demands.

“When I started, you’d just come in and they’d give you the turnouts,” he said. “A lot’s changed since then.”

To boost their ranks, the department has turned in part to “junior firefighters,” local students who are given tasks like rolling up hoses and washing trucks starting at age 16, then graduating to responding to emergency calls when they turn 18.

Nancy said seeing younger people answer the call to serve the community is one of the best parts of the job. One former junior firefighter now works as a full-timer for Crook County Fire & Rescue, she said. Next year, the department plans to welcome a new junior firefighter, a now-15-year-old boy who’s been set on becoming a firefighter ever since volunteers — Nancy included — came to his family’s aid when he was 5 years old.

“If I would have started at a younger age, I would have gone into it as a career, but now I’m a grandma …” she said. “My father was transported by ambulance in Lakeview, and if it wasn’t for that ambulance, he would have died. I want someone to be there for my family.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0387, shammers@bendbulletin.com

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