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AMHERST, Mass. – Five student firefighters from the �������� Amherst Student Force have been promoted to full-time at the Amherst Fire Department, boosting the department back up to full staffing through June. They will assist with staffing during this period of responding to COVID-19.

The five, who begin full-time duties next week, have been part of the student firefighter program based at the North Amherst Fire Station on East Pleasant Street, a collaboration between the university and town that dates back to 1953. The station is adjacent to the UMass Amherst campus.

Maryanne Steele, assistant director of Campus Safety and Fire Prevention for the UMass Amherst Department of Environmental Health and Safety, says, “We have had a long history of UMass students volunteering to serve on the Amherst Fire Department Student Force and now five of those students have been hired as full firefighters to assist with staffing during this period of responding to COVID-19. We are proud of our students’ readiness to be a part of the Student Force year after year, and we congratulate these five for getting full-time positions on the force. This also demonstrates how our student firefighters are a valuable part of both the university and the Amherst Fire Department.”

Lindsay Stromgren, assistant fire chief in Amherst, says the five student firefighters – Dan Averill, Briana Baker, Ethan Gorman, AnnMarie Marquis and John Miller – will take the place of one retired and four injured firefighters on the town force. They are spending this week becoming familiar with aspects of the job they don’t typically deal with as members of the student force, he says.

They will be assigned to one of the four full-time shifts at the department and will work the same schedule as the other firefighters on 24-hour shifts. They will serve as both firefighters and as EMTs on the ambulance, Stromgren says.

“Filling all the open positions with temporary firefighters brings our crew strengths back up to full. This will help take some of the burden off the existing members, and give us a small buffer should the pandemic hit hard here, increasing our EMS traffic, or worse rendering a portion of our workforce unable to work due to illness,” Stromgren says. “So far we have seen a decrease in overall call volume given the various shutdowns in the area including the colleges, but also a small increase in calls for ‘flu like symptoms.’ Our goal is to be ready to continue to fulfill our role to the community should we experience a large increase in COVID-19 cases both in the community and possibly our workforce.”

During the academic year the student force has about 30 members, six of whom live in the station in bunkrooms. The others rotate in and out when on shift.  Given the current shutdown of the university, there are nine other student firefighters that are remaining in Amherst to finish the semester, according to Stromgren. Those students have all transferred to the part-time call force to finish out the spring, he says.

The Student Force normally fills a valuable role to the department and the town by providing an additional engine company in-service. During the academic year they staff a four-person engine every night from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m., and 24 hours on weekends. During intersession and the summer months, those student firefighters that remain in Amherst are able to transfer to the call force and serve with them. The call force is composed of town residents and people that work in town, who are on-call for fires, or any other calls when the full-time crews are tied up on other emergencies, Stromgren says.