ESCANABA — The Gladstone Volunteer Fire Department recently named Craig Lancour their 2023 Fireman of the Year.

Fire Chief Matt Smith, who has been with the department since 2017, said that Gladstone started honoring a firefighter of the year a few years back as a way of recognizing those members who have gone “above and beyond” or “assisted the department in some unique way.”

Members of the department voted for one outstanding individual among their ranks, a practice that Gladstone Public Safety Director Ron Robinson said began in 2019.

Of course, being a volunteer firefighter is in and of itself no small feat.

“Any firefighter in the State of Michigan, whether you’re on a volunteer or a fully-paid department in a larger city, has to go through the same training,” said Smith, adding that completion of the 240 in-seat hours of state-mandated training to be certified is “one of the biggest barriers that we have now.”

Once trained and on board with a department – or multiple departments, as is the case for Lancour and others – a volunteer firefighter keeps a pager (or a phone with an app that acts the same) on him that may go off at any time Central Dispatch identifies a need. Gladstone’s responders may be paged for an incident originating in their jurisdiction or elsewhere in the county if the local department requires assistance.

Officers of Gladstone’s Public Safety Department, of which there are nine, are also fire certified; the volunteer firefighters are supplemental but instrumental. Gladstone is insured for a roster of up to 20, but at the moment they only have 15 certified, with another member who probably won’t be fully qualified until 2025.

“We’re all, I guess you could say, on call 24/7,” said Smith of the firefighters in Gladstone’s volunteer department. “Recognizing that there’s times when we can’t respond for whatever reason, the expectation is that if we can respond, we will respond.”

When asked what made Lancour the choice for Gladstone’s firefighter of the year by his peers, Smith cited Lancour’s level of involvement in emergency response county-wide. The honoree is a lieutenant with Gladstone Fire, assistant fire chief in Ensign and an EMT with Masonville; he’s one of only a couple individuals in the area certified to conduct ice rescue training; he is American Heart Association CPR trainer certified and teaches CPR to other first responders, daycare workers, athletics coaches, scout leaders, friends and more.

“Craig has really helped to get us all proficient and then keep us proficient with planning trainings and things like that,” Smith reported. “So he’s highly involved in the whole county and just very proactive and trying to keep people safe and trained.”

When the Daily Press reached out to Lancour for comment, he was downstate volunteering on a standby rescue team at a General Motors plant shutdown. Speaking from Lansing, he said he was one of two from the Escanaba area and that the other seven on the job are from Missouri.

“We’re all up here together, you know, providing two shifts 24/7 coverage rescue standby at this shutdown, because this outage involves a big confined space, which – there’s lots of specs and permits, and a lot of inherent risks for the workers in that space per OSHA guidelines, we’re the team on the site that’s going to go in and rescue if anybody has any issues,” Lancour explained.

He took a few weeks off work to be there and said it took days to adapt to not having the pager he uses in Delta County at his side.

Lancour has worked at the Escanaba paper mill for over 25 years and said that his foray into emergency response began on the job.

“The paper mill has its own emergency response teams, and it’s a volunteer basis amongst the employees,” Lancour explained. “It was something I was interested in, and I started there on the rescue teams first. Which, you know, we do everything – we do fire, hazmat, tactical rescue, and then I’m an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) also, because we have a medical team out there.”

Having gained his training and certifications, Lancour, who lives in Rapid River, joined the Ensign Township Fire Department a little over 20 years ago, he estimates. A couple years later, he joined Masonville Emergency Medical Services as an EMT.

In 2015, he signed up with the Gladstone Volunteer Fire Department after their need became unavoidably evident.

“The volunteers are just few and far between,” Lancour said. “State mandates for licensures and certifications — we have to have the same qualification as a full-time paid fireman, let’s say, down in the city of Detroit. And it’s hard to get that; it’s hard to maintain it when people work other jobs. We’ve got families, raising kids, and whatnot. … I knew some people in Gladstone, some coworkers, and I knew they were short-handed. And even better to get somebody that’s coming in the door that’s already got their certifications. And I said, you know, I’d love to join youse guys. Why not? It’s simply just adding another set of tones and my pager.”

The fire departments respond to car accidents, fires, ice rescues. Lancour said that between Gladstone and Ensign fire departments, he gets about 20 to 40 calls per year, five to 10 of which are “serious” fires; for Masonville EMS, the pager goes off about 250 to 300 times a year.

All the while, Lancour has been working at the paper mill and raising two kids, who are aged 20 and 22 now.

He pointed out that he isn’t the only one for whom emergency response at multiple levels is second nature.

“Me wearing multiple tones on my pager and being on numerous departments is not that rare. I can think of, right off the top of my head, at least a dozen guys that I know here in Delta County that do the same. And as the mandates get more strict as far as certification and maintaining certification, unfortunately I’m afraid we’re going to see more and more of that.”

Between the cost of running a fire department and the low number of members, “I’m fearing that one day you’re gonna see Delta County have a fire district, and we will all work together on everyone’s fire,” Lancour said. “I hope I don’t see that day, but I’m fearing that that’s gonna be something in the future that’s gonna answer our problem of shortage of people.”

Especially in rural areas like the Upper Peninsula, volunteers continue to be needed. Ensign Township Fire Department has a cadet program to help those as young as 16 get a foot in the door.

When asked what citizens can do to make firefighters’ jobs easier – aside from joining their ranks to provide more hands, potentially offering better support by reducing the burnout frequently experienced by first responders and especially volunteers – Lancour said that calling 911 early is important and that everyone should know CPR.

“Early notification is huge for us, because as volunteers, we’re coming from possibly home or at a baseball game or, you know, at a birthday party or sometimes even from work, and the time that it takes us to get either to the incident or to the fire station to get a fire truck – we’re losing valuable time … in those crucial minutes when somebody’s life is on the line,” Lancour said.

He added that CPR is simple to learn, and bystander care can go a long way.