When Mike Neal first started volunteering at the Ringgold Fire Department in 1970, when he was 16, volunteers were easier to come by, and Pittsylvania County was even more rural than it is now.
Neal’s father was the Ringgold station’s first fire chief in 1958. He responded to calls in a “homemade fire truck” with a team of firefighters who worked at mom-and-pop shops or on farms, where they could leave to run a call anytime, Neal said.
Today, there’s a greater challenge around attracting and retaining volunteers, which the county has relied on for emergency services for decades.
And Pittsylvania’s hopes for growth may further strain these services. A 1,900-unit housing project was approved in the county last year, and many residents expressed concerns about the impact that a densely populated development could have on emergency services.
It’s harder to get volunteers today, Neal said, because people’s lives are busier. Volunteers have become more scarce even since Neal took his father’s place as Ringgold fire chief in 1991. 
At the same time, call volumes are increasing.
“We’re running between 1,200 and 1,300 calls a year,” Neal said. “So we have over 100 calls a month.”
And that’s just at the Ringgold station, which covers a swath of the southeastern part of Pittsylvania that’s home to about 11,000 residents. County-wide, there were over 12,600 responses to calls in 2023.
The county started tracking response information in 2020, so there are no historical numbers for comparison. Still, calls have increased every year since record-keeping began. In 2021, there were about 11,500 responses throughout the county.
Despite decreasing volunteerism and increasing calls, fire chiefs in Pittsylvania say residents will still receive adequate rescue services. But creative solutions may be necessary as the county works to increase its population.
Fewer volunteers, more calls
Neal said that one reason for the decreased volunteerism at fire stations is the nature of the economy and employment today.
“We have volunteers with jobs, some with two jobs,” he said. “The economy and the way the world is today, a lot of times it takes a husband and wife both working to pay the bills. And if you’ve got children, they have more activities than they used to.”
Two other fire chiefs — Dean Fowler of the Blairs Fire Department and Lee Barker of the Kentuck Fire Department — agreed.
“For years and years, I had members who were able to leave work and respond to calls,” Fowler said. “That was back when we ran probably 150 to 200 calls per year. But when you get north of 1,500 or 2,000 calls a year, and a guy needs to leave work five or six times in an eight-hour shift, it’s hard for a company to allow that.”
Barker said that when he joined the Kentuck station in 2001, he was one of about 40 volunteers, 25 of whom were very active.
“Now we have a team with about 18 on the roll and only about five or six truly active,” he said.
The Kentuck station is responsible for about 18 square miles north of the Ringgold station’s coverage area, while the Blairs station covers about 25 square miles north of the city of Danville.
In the amount of time that Barker has seen volunteers at Kentuck drop by more than half, the call volume has increased “exponentially,” he said.
Back in 2001, Barker said the Kentuck station responded to about 140 fire and EMS calls in a year. More recently, the call volume has jumped to around 500 calls per year.
A big factor in this increase is more frequent EMS calls for non-emergency situations, Fowler said.
“It used to be that you made an EMS call for something that was really serious in nature, life-threatening,” Fowler said. “Now you get calls for a cut finger, a toothache, a headache. You get called to come get people up off the floor. The culture has changed and people rely on fire and rescue to do everything.”
Of the 12,600 calls in the county in 2023, about 9,600 of them were for emergency medical services. Usually, both a fire truck and an ambulance from the fire station will respond to these calls.
The Kentuck station experiences the same problem, said Barker.
“People abuse 911, especially on the medical side,” he said. “They call for everything. … Somebody’s got a cold and a runny nose for three or four days, and they’ll call instead of going to somewhere like PrimeCare. Everybody thinks they need the emergency room.”
Barker said he thinks part of the problem is that some people don’t see a primary care physician unless they have previous chronic illnesses. And many people call 911 for something that isn’t really an emergency because they think getting to the hospital by ambulance will get them treated faster, which is not the case, he said.
“Another issue we have realized is that when following national dispatch protocols, a 911 dispatcher has a series of questions to ask,” Barker said. “In several instances, these questions are leading, possibly making the call an ‘emergency’ when in fact it is not.”
About 85% of the calls that the Ringgold station receives are for emergency medical services, Neal said.
While volunteers are hard to come by in general, the time commitment and level of training required for emergency medical technicians makes it especially hard to find people to respond to EMS calls.
Getting people trained for these roles is 75% of the battle, Fowler said.
“If people want to do both [fire and EMS], it takes two years to get all the certifications,” Barker said. “EMT basic is four to six months of classroom training, and a lot of people will start the class, but due to work schedules and other stuff, might not be able to complete it.”
While the Blairs and Ringgold stations have a few dozen volunteers that can respond to these increasing calls, the Kentuck station only has a handful of EMTs.
As a result, its EMS license was not renewed by the Virginia Department of Health when it expired, according to a September news release from Pittsylvania County.
This means that the Kentuck station will no longer respond to EMS calls. Instead, other nearby stations will provide this service in its coverage area. 
Fewer EMS programs
A station needs to respond to a minimum of 70% of calls in order to get the full amount of funding that the county offers, Barker said.
Responding to a call means that a vehicle or a person goes to the scene of the emergency, according to Chris Key, the county’s public safety director.
The Kentuck station was not coming anywhere close to the 70% minimum, Barker said.
“Our response rate at the time was 44% and dropping,” he said. “We only have three true EMTs to run between 350 to 400 calls [per year].”
Kentuck plans to reapply for the license as soon as it can meet state requirements, the release said.
“We’re trying to work through the administrative issues we had, and also trying to recruit,” Barker said. “But of course recruiting and getting them certified, that’s two different things.”
In the meantime, Kentuck will still respond to fire-related calls, and the Blairs and Ringgold stations will respond to EMS calls in Kentuck’s coverage area.
This leaves only 10 of the county’s 21 fire stations offering EMS services.
Residents will continue to get the emergency services they need, which is a big misconception, Barker said.
With fewer EMS programs in the county, an EMT might take a little longer to arrive, he said. But an ambulance, which is sent from a fire department and usually arrives after an EMT anyway, will still get to the scene in the same amount of time.
“As far as transport to the hospital, there’s no change in that,” Barker said. “That’s going to remain the same. The only difference is how quick the first person is. And in 80% to 90% of cases, that’s no big deal. If it’s a cardiac arrest or somebody cut their leg off, that’s different, but we don’t get a lot of those calls.”
Neal said that the Ringgold station is running 93% of the rescue calls that come in, far above the minimum requirement of 70%.
And Fowler said that the stations have a collaborative relationship, which helps improve service overall.
“Kentuck members can come and train with us to keep their certifications up personally,” Fowler said. “If those folks respond and use something out of their personal medical bags, we take those supplies off the ambulance and replenish them so that they’re not out of pocket for anything, because that’s their personal stuff now that [Kentuck] is no longer a licensed agency.”
And though there is significant support for fire and rescue in the county, there are sometimes complaints about response times, Fowler said. But he added that it’s important for people to understand that this is part of living in a rural area.
“I realize that when folks have an emergency, if we’re next door we’re not close enough for them,” he said. “But by the same token, when I built my house where I built it, I knew I wasn’t going to be in a downtown city with a fire truck or ambulance within a 2-minute response time.”
Potential impacts of future growth
Pittsylvania County, along with the city of Danville, has been working toward growth through economic development and housing efforts. More jobs and housing in Pittsylvania will eventually lead to more residents, meaning even more calls for emergency services.
A master-planned community with about 1,900 housing units has been approved for the community of Axton is in the southwestern part of the county.
Though both the county planning commission and board of supervisors voted in favor of the project, many residents showed up to meetings to voice their opposition.
Stephanie Smith, who lives on a farm near the project’s border, said she was concerned about the impact that a development this large would have on law enforcement and fire services.
“If we’re going to grow, we need more resources,” Smith said.
Southside Investing, the developer that is undertaking the Axton project, has said it plans to address these concerns.
The group has agreed to allocate 2 acres of the anticipated 580-acre project for the county’s use. While the specific use is yet to be determined, it will likely be the site of a fire station and perhaps a police substation, for what will be a densely populated development.
The location of these 2 acres within the parcel is yet to be determined because the project will take about a decade to be fully built out, said Tony Salah with Southside Investing.
“We haven’t gotten to that yet, but we’re looking forward to working with the county to find the optimal site to provide the best service to the citizens of Pittsylvania County and probably beyond,” Salah said.
The station would likely also be volunteer-based. But Salah said that the housing development, which could bring in $3 million in annual tax revenue for the county, could mean a solution to some of the recruitment issues.
“Part of the challenge of having enough safety response personnel is having enough of a tax base to pay for that,” he said. “This may be a strain now, but it’s a little difficult to rectify that without jobs and homes.”
Neal, Barker and Fowler all said that they support the growth that the county is working toward.
“I can remember when I grew up in this community, from the city of Danville to White Oak Mountain, there were three businesses,” Fowler said. “Now, when you travel, there are industrial areas everywhere. And I think we’ll see more of that, and I hope we do for the county’s growth.”
But county resources need to grow, too, he said.
“A lot of times, the revenue for more resources comes after [growth] is already here,” he said. “It’s a reactive approach as opposed to a proactive approach.”
He said that he thinks the county has been trying to think more proactively about this recently, but that it’s a challenge that is plaguing many places across the country.
One thing that would be helpful, Barker said, is an expansion of the county’s public safety department, which oversees the 911 dispatch center and coordinates efforts between the fire and rescue agencies spread across the county.
In 2021, public safety personnel were assigned a dual role as firefighters and EMS providers, meaning they can run calls to help volunteers.
Most of the volunteer agencies in the county tend to fight the growth of the public safety department because it can be seen as competition, Barker said, but he supports it.
“[The county] is going to have to increase public safety because eventually, probably within my lifetime, there won’t be any volunteers,” Barker said.
Of course, bolstering this department would take lots of additional funding. Funding for Pittsylvania fire and rescue currently comes from the county and from independent fundraising that the stations organize.
“A fire engine now is almost a million dollars for a basic truck,” he said. “An ambulance is $750,000, and that’s not including all the equipment.”
This is why Barker thinks that projects toward growth, like housing developments and industrial sites that can bring more money into the county, are crucial.
The county has been spending between $1 million and $1.4 million for volunteer fire and rescue services since 2018, according to county data. Operating costs include electricity, fuel for vehicles, heating fuels and insurance, according to Kim VanDerHyde, Pittsylvania finance director.
The 2024 budget for these services is nearly $1.5 million.
Right now, the amount of equipment the county has is sufficient, Fowler said, but the quality could be improved. However, this could change as the county grows.
“If we do see major growth, there are going to have to be ladder trucks that don’t exist in some areas,” Fowler said. “If we get an influx of industry and commercial development, we’re going to have to increase these things.”
