The Lander Fire Hall on Garfield Street will throw open its doors on Thursday, October 8, from 6 to 8 p.m., and the invitation is about as broad as a small-town fire department can extend: come in, watch a sprinkler head do its work, climb around a hazardous materials trailer, see what happens when a power line comes down, and eat a pulled pork slider while you're at it.
The occasion is Fire Prevention Week, the annual national push that the National Fire Protection Association has run since 1922 to mark the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. This year's theme is "Charge into Fire Safety: Safe Charging Is a Superpower," a campaign aimed squarely at the lithium-ion batteries tucked inside phones, laptops, e-bikes, and cordless power tools. Lander Volunteer Fire Department Chief Eric Siwik put the stakes plainly: "Lithium-ion battery safety is critical to preventing fires."
But the open house carries a second, heavier weight this year. The Lander Volunteer Fire Department is marking 125 years of service to the community, a milestone that few volunteer departments anywhere reach and that in a town of roughly 7,500 people means something particular. A volunteer department is not an abstraction. It is neighbors. The people who show up at 2 a.m. when a house is burning are the same people you see at the grocery store the next morning.
That reality has been on vivid display in Lander this year. In April, high winds drove a fire through a Lander wood shop, threatening nearby homes and drawing the department out into conditions that make structure fires especially dangerous. A department celebrating a 125th anniversary is a department that has spent those years doing exactly this work, often in weather that makes it harder.
The week leading up to the open house is its own tradition. Firefighters fan out across Lander's daycares, preschools, and elementary schools, reaching 20 classrooms with lessons on smoke alarms, the danger of playing with matches, and how firefighters help keep a community safe. Children get to see firefighters in full protective gear, and some classrooms get hands-on tours of fire trucks and ladder trucks. "This week is a favorite among firefighters in our community," said Chris Johnson, the City of Lander's Airport and Fire Department Manager. "We get to provide education to children and help teach them lifelong fire safety lessons."
It is a reasonable bet that more than a few of the adults who will staff Thursday's open house first met the department as kids on one of those classroom visits.
The Thursday event itself is a collaboration between LVFD and the Fremont County Fire Protection District, and the roster of participants reads like a full accounting of who responds when something goes wrong in Fremont County: wildland firefighters, local law enforcement, Fremont County Emergency Management, the FBI, and the Wyoming Department of Family Services. Rocky Mountain Power will run a power line safety demonstration, the kind of thing that is far more persuasive watched in person than read about in a pamphlet. The Region V Hazardous Materials trailer will be on hand. And the live fire sprinkler demonstration, which shows in real time how quickly a single sprinkler head can knock down a fire before it spreads, tends to be the moment people remember.
Food service begins at 6 p.m. and runs while supplies last, with donations accepted. Anyone curious about joining the department is invited to stop by and ask.
That last point may be the quiet heart of the evening. Volunteer fire departments across rural America have struggled for years to recruit and retain members, and a 125th anniversary is both a celebration and a reminder of what is at stake in the next 125. Thursday night, the doors are open, the food is free, and the lesson is the same one the department has been teaching since its earliest days: fire is preventable, and the people who prevent it live next door.