Randall Gillette is 65 years old, but he says he feels much younger. Maybe even 30. He works part time for the city of Pemberton, a tiny town near Mankato.
Recently, Gillette took on an even bigger responsibility: volunteer firefighter.
And that’s a good thing, because like a lot of small towns, Pemberton really needs volunteer firefighters.
Randall Gillette is a new volunteer firefighter at Pemberton's fire department. Hannah Yang | MPR News “I only live 5 miles out, and I’m around here all day long,” Gillette said. “They need somebody in the daytime, and that would work out just fine. I’ve done a lot of things in my lifetime. I’ve never done this, but I’ll give her a try.”
Pemberton, population 229, needs more volunteer firefighters like Gillette or risks having to shutter its fire department due to a lack of volunteers. It’s part of a nationwide pattern: While call volume for emergencies has increased, there’s been a big drop in the number of people trained and willing to respond to them.
Randall Gillette, 65, of Pemberton, Minn., walks through the Pemberton Fire Station earlier this month. He's one of the newest recruits for the volunteer fire department. Hannah Yang | MPR News In 2008, there were over 827,000 volunteer firefighters in the U.S., according to the National Fire Protection Association. That number fell more than 20 percent to just 635,000 in 2023.
Earlier this year, Pemberton stepped up recruiting efforts and signed up several new recruits, including Gillette.
Kathy Grinnell, Pemberton city clerk, said local bylaws require a minimum of 15 firefighters to stay open, and volunteers must live within 15 miles from Pemberton.
“It’s a revolving door,” she said. “When you have a lot of people up there in retirement level, you’re hoping they don’t all go at once.”
Pemberton City Clerk Kathy Grinnell said the fire department is the "glue" that keeps the community together. Grinnell also said that losing the fire department means relying on other communities for emergency services, which can lead to longer response times. Hannah Yang | MPR News If the volunteer fire department closes, surrounding communities would have to take on the burden.
“It would be very expensive,” Grinnell said. “And the cost, I would assume, would be shared by everyone [in Pemberton] if it got to that point.”
In addition to higher costs, Grinnell said shuttering the local fire department would also translate into longer response times in life-and-death situations.
“Without the fire department, we would really have a very strong need for somebody to be able to answer the call when there’s emergencies,” she said.
Randall Gillette is a military veteran. He said he wanted to volunteer as a firefighter to help his community. He also works on the city's public works team. Hannah Yang | MPR News
Community identity
Pemberton isn’t alone in its struggles.
Steve Hirsch, chair of the National Volunteer Fire Council, a nonprofit that represents the interests of first responders, said the big drop in volunteer firefighters is playing out in different ways across America.
“It may be a community that’s gotten very small, and it simply doesn’t have anybody to recruit from,” Hirsch said. “It may be a department where everybody works out of town, and there’s nobody there during the daytime to man the trucks.”
The city of Pemberton pushed a mass marketing campaign in attempts to recruit more volunteer firefighters for its department. Hannah Yang | MPR News Hirsch oversees the volunteer fire department in rural Sheridan County, Kansas, not too far from the Wyoming and Colorado borders. He said signing up to provide emergency medical care and fight fires in a small town is a big deal.
“Many times, you pull into some of these small towns, the newest, biggest building in the community is the fire station, because that's a source of local pride,” he said. “Some of these communities have lost their schools. Some don't have a grocery store, a cafe or a bank anymore, maybe not even a post office. And so that fire department becomes the community's identity.”
And that, Grinnell said, is true for her town of Pemberton.
“The fire department is another very huge part of the community,” she said. “It's like the glue that holds the town together.”
Which is why Gillette, a U.S. Army veteran, signed up to volunteer.
“You got to help out,” he said. “That’s just the way it is … I’ve helped out a lot of people in this town. They know I’ll help them out if they need a hand or something.”
The Upper Midwest Newsroom is a public media collaboration between Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and Minnesota made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.