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Edgewood Volunteer Fire Department Graduates 15 Recruits

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Many smaller communities and boroughs in Western Pennsylvania cannot afford to pay full-time professional firefighters.

However, in Edgewood, the volunteer fire department is working to hold itself to the same standards as the paid pros.

"If you call 911 in the Borough of Edgewood, from the time you call until the time there is a fire truck there is 4 minutes and 40 seconds. And we are incredibly proud of that fact," Edgewood Fire Lt. Fred Caprio said.

That is possible because of the ever-growing number of volunteer firefighters who work for the Edgewood Volunteer Fire Department. Many of them are Pitt students.

"This is our second-ever recruit class here. We are graduating 15 folks who are certified as firefighter level one, which is the basic standard for firefighters," Caprio said.

In Edgewood, they have to be willing to answer the call when someone needs help.

"They come off their campus either in car or by bus and they come and spend the night in our fire station in the bunker room. They live here, cook here, eat here, sleep here. That makes a big difference. We try to hold ourselves --even though as a volunteer department -- to the standard of a paid professional department," Caprio said.

Getting to graduation is no easy feat. The graduating class has more than 3,000 hours of training at the firehouse over the past six months. Firefighters go on to work in Edgewood, Munhall and Penn Hills.

"It makes a big difference to us. We knew there were people out there and people who wanted to help, and when we put these advertisements out to Pitt to come down here to this training which we offer -- it's all in-house. We purchased a program from the Community College at Bucks, which allows us to have all of this training here at our fire station than off-site," Caprio said.

Because of the emphasis on recruiting and training new members, Edgewood does things other volunteer departments can only dream about.

"Three years ago, we were a small department. We had a very small handful of members and we ran every call with just three or four people. Now, we have over six people (on average) on every call. We respond to every call (on average) in under two minutes. We are out of this fire station and on the road. People never have to come from their home to the fire station. We actually have between four and eight people here staffing our fire station every night," Caprio said.

And all of them are volunteers.

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