Volunteer Operations
Prior to 1950, independent volunteer fire companies protected Arlington County. As the demand for services for fire and EMS grew, the need for full time paid staff was acknowledged by the County. Staff was hired, first to augment the volunteers, then finally to provide the full range of services required in a modern, urban, fire department. The department is now staffed with more than 350 full-time career professionals who serve 24/7/365. Volunteers continue to play a role in the combination department, supplementing career staff and providing specialty services.
Read more about this topic: Arlington County Fire Department
Famous quotes containing the words volunteer and/or operations:
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)