After attending classes during the day, Alex Vida goes home at night to an apartment above Gorham’s Central Fire Station. The Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) undergraduate is one of 20 students who live in the town’s six fire stations and who receive extensive training in firefighting from the department. Along with keeping the trucks and apparatus clean, they get the equipment ready to move when a nighttime call comes in. Like Vida, most are enrolled in the SMCC fire science or para-medicine programs, but some attend the University of Southern Maine or St. Joseph’s College.
Photo credit Kathy CorbettAlex Vida is a second year student who is living at Central Fire Station.
Two other SMCC students are living at the Gorham/Standish fire station in North Gorham. Nicholas Daigle from Madawaska and Adam Vinning from Poland have completed the course in Fire Science and are continuing their studies in criminal justice and para-medicine at the college while maintaining the fire trucks, answering calls, and keeping the station clean. Daigle, who is in his second year at the station, said that his father is a firefighter back home, but he wants to make his career in southern Maine where there is more opportunity. Like all the students living in Gorham fire stations, Daigle is both a student and a vital member of the community.
Gorham and Scarborough fire departments started the program 27 years ago. Today, other towns now have students living at their stations as well. Of Gorham’s current resident students, six live at the Central Station and the others are at White Rock, West Gorham, North Gorham/Standish, South Gorham/Scarborough, and Little Falls/Windham.
Two of the town’s first students were Mike Nault, Gorham Police Department lieutenant, and Mike Kusma, the deputy fire chief who died on duty in 2014. Although there have been female students in the past, this year all Gorham students are men.
Students apply for the competitive program, and once accepted, commit to being at the station from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sunday through Thursday nights. They have a rotating schedule for weekends. Each is required to take two weeks of extensive training, and must be certified to operate at least one truck. When they perform tasks such as shoveling hydrants, they are paid the same as the regular on-call company staff.
According to Chief Robert Lefebvre, the program is extremely successful with failure to maintain passing grades the main reason for most of the few dismissals. He said that in addition to the services they perform, “another benefit is that lots of kids from out of state end up living in Gorham and staying with the department.”
Vida is one of those students from away. He comes from Vermont, and was encouraged to enroll in the SMCC fire science program by a family friend. This is his second year in the live-in program. “I really appreciate getting the hands-on experience from the Gorham Department,” he said. An opportunity to learn on the job and to build relationships with other firefighters are pluses too. When asked who does the cooking for the six residents of Central Station, he replied, “me and one other are the best cooks, so we do most of it.”