A nonprofit volunteer department serving Dummerston and, through mutual aid, its neighbours. Its members carry pagers around the clock, and its rescue side answers medical calls alongside the fire side.
1950
The West Dummerston Volunteer Fire Department is founded.
2017
The new Center Station is built after a fundraising drive led by Chief Rick Looman.
2022
A record year for calls.
264 calls that year
2023
Calls from December 2022 to November 2023, including a record 38 crashes. Larry Pratt Jr. is elected chief in October, and seven members take two days of emergency medical training in December. A new partnership with Dummerston Cares installs smoke detectors in homes.
239 calls that year
Calls
Medical calls were well over half the total.
Calls by type, December 2022 – November 2023
Medical138
Motor vehicle crashes38
Trees and wires22
Mutual aid given22
Automatic fire alarms11
Carbon monoxide4
Brush and illegal burns2
Chimney fire1
Structure fire1
The types add up to the 239 calls reported. Mutual aid was received 4 times.
Dummerston in Windham County. Every fire station in the county is marked —
2 here, 28 in neighbouring towns, which is
who turns out on a mutual aid call.
Boundaries and water from VCGI; fire district lines are not town lines, and
village districts and contracted coverage cross them. A town line runs out into
the lake, so the shoreline here is the water drawn over the boundary, not the
boundary itself.
Money
The town pays most of the department's operating budget; fundraisers, a golf tournament and an annual fund drive among them, cover much of the rest.
Fiscal year 2024–25 (proposed)
Town appropriation to the department
$101,968
Mutual aid assessment
$33,500
Insurance
$13,195
The department's proposed budget is $154,748 of income in all; the mutual aid and insurance lines are its two largest costs.
Fundraising, fiscal year 2022–23 (actual)
Golf tournament
$23,395
Fund drive
$18,573
Pancake breakfast
$4,545
Barbecue
$3,217
From the department's operating budget printed in the town report.
Working here
New volunteers are welcome on the fire or rescue side, and non-responding auxiliary members help with bookkeeping, fundraising and events.
Fire volunteers typically complete the 184-hour State Fire Academy course, then several dozen hours a year of continuing education
Rescue volunteers complete similar training and keep their certifications each year
Drop by a station on a Tuesday evening, or call Chief Pratt
In an emergency dial 911. These are business lines.
Burning
Vermont requires a Permit to Kindle Fire from the town’s Forest Fire Warden for anything larger than a campfire — except where snow covers the ground at the burn site, or the fire is at least 200 feet from anything that will carry flame. Wardens can suspend burning outright when fire danger is high. Who to ask locally is recorded department by department; where it is blank below, the fire department itself is the place to start.
For residents
Smoke detectorsInstalled in homes around town through the department's partnership with Dummerston Cares.
Read in October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
Not recorded yet
Nothing is written up here for burn permits.
Not because it does not exist — because nobody has typed it in. If you know this
department, tell us and it goes on the record with its
source named.