 - The Lander Volunteer Fire Department is making progress towards its goal of achieving a full roster of 45 firefighters, LVFD Chief Eric Siwik told the Lander City Council during a meeting this month.){kind=link}
(Lander, WY) – The Lander Volunteer Fire Department is making progress towards its goal of achieving a full roster of 45 firefighters, LVFD Chief Eric Siwik told the Lander City Council during a meeting this month.
“It seems like the floodgates are opening up right now,” Siwik said. “So we’re trying to take advantage of that the best we can.”
Recruitment was “a big part of” 2024 for the fire department, he explained, and it continues to be a focus in 2025 because “we’re down on our membership.”
“We currently have … 30 firefighters,” Siwik said. “(So) we’d like to see an additional 15 firefighters to have a full roster.”
There are four applicants “working through the process to join” right now, he noted, and “we have another three folks looking into applying,” so “we’re on the right track of getting some folks, hopefully.”
ISO ranking
The anticipated increase in membership should help the city maintain its level-three ranking with the Insurance Service Office, Siwik said.
The city is “in jeopardy of moving to a level four” ranking as a result of a recent audit the ISO conducted in Lander, covering “everything from the fire department to the water distribution systems (and) the dispatch center,” he explained.
“We’re currently working with ISO on a retrogression plan to maintain a level three after this year,” Siwik said.
That retrogression plan will address the “areas of improvement” that the ISO identified for the LVFD as part of their audit, Siwik said – including the fact that the “average number of firefighters responding to incidents” in Lander is “below the recommended standard.”
“Again, with not having that full roster, it’s hard to get a solid number of (volunteers),” he said. “The more firefighters we have rostered, the better chance we have of getting more people (to respond).”
For example, Siwik recalled that, about 10 years ago, when there were 44 people on the LVFD roster, an average of 20 firefighters responded to every call.
Now, Siwik said, with 30 people on the roster, an average of 10 firefighters respond to every call.
“So numbers definitely help us out on that,” he said, expressing confidence that the city would be able to maintain its level-three ranking based on “the retrogression plan and working with the ISO.”
Mayor Missy White thanked Siwik for “getting some folks in the pipeline” to volunteer at the LVFD, noting that the ISO ranking is “important to all of us” because it “affects our home insurance.”
“If that rating changes, there’s a direct impact on all home and building owners (in town),” she said. “(So) I’m really psyched that you’re seeing results with that.”
2024
White also complimented the LVFD for logging a “phenomenal” average response time of 7 minutes and 56 seconds in 2024.
“Yeah, for a volunteer department, I’m pretty happy with that,” Siwik replied.
The LVFD responded to 137 calls in 2024 – up from 106 in 2023 – and they spent an average of 32 minutes and 15 seconds on scene, Siwik said.
The 137 calls included:
- 45 “other” calls (electrical hazards, gas investigations, cancelled before arriving, public service)
- 33 fires (building fires, mobile homes, vehicle, grass, brush, and other)
- 28 fire alarms (faulty smoke detectors and alarm systems, malfunctions, pulled fire alarms or other active investigations)
- 24 carbon monoxide calls
- 7 rescue and emergency services incidents (EMS assists, motor vehicle accidents)
LVFD members also participated in 24 training opportunities in 2024, tallying 1,188 hours of training, Siwik said – and those numbers don’t include “outside training classes that individual members attended.”
His report doesn’t include “all the cleanup time after calls at the station” either, Siwik said – or the community events local firefighters attend.
“There’s a lot of extra time that the firefighters are putting in,” he said. “I’d like to thank them for their continuous efforts.”
2025
Looking ahead, Siwik said the LVFD hopes to secure enough funding this year to purchase a training building or “prop” that would allow firefighters to practice maneuvers like ventilation, forcible entry, search and rescue, hose advancement, and “many other things that currently we typically have to go out of town to train on.”
The LVFD already raised $100,000 for the project last year, Siwik said, and they’re working with the LOR Foundation to raise another $30,000 in 2025 to “get us to the finish line on that.”
“Hopefully here in the next month or so we’ll have the funding secured and be able to purchase that prop for the future,” he said. “We hope to have that at the fire department drill field.”
Siwik also talked about the LVFD’s “biggest area of concern … going into the future:” the 25 percent property tax exemption the Wyoming Legislature passed this year for owner-occupied, single-family residential properties – with no backfill funding from the state.
“Property tax (is) primarily where our budget comes from,” Siwik said. “So we don’t know what that’s going to look like for us yet.”
White thanked Siwik for “bringing up the concerns about the change in property tax,” pointing out that three of the eight mills Lander levies each year “are directed to the fire department,” so “those being cut by potentially up to a quarter – there will be impacts for that.”
For more information, call the LVFD at (307) 332-2209.