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Bellwood-Antis freshman Abby Pearce, and Mckenzie Lang love working at the Excelsior Number 1 fire hall, and they spend a lot of their free time there.

As Junior Firefighters, they help at fundraisers, attend meetings, and will soon start training. They will be training to fight fires, but since they are only junior fire fighters, they can only do certain types of training. They will be junior members until they are eighteen, when they can become senior members.

Mckenzie and Abby both agree that serving the community is the best part of what they do.

“I really don’t have a favorite,” said Mckenzie. “Overall I love serving the community in all ways.”

“My favorite thing would have to be helping each other out, whether it’s someone from our station, another station, or just a stranger,” said Abby.

They both have sentimental reasons for doing what they do, but in general they want to help people in need.

“The reason I do what I do is because my dad almost died in a fire saving others’ lives,” said Mckenzie. “I wanted to go out there and save lives like my dad does, so I became a Junior Firefighter and I love everything about it.”

“I want to serve the community, and this is a way to,” said Abby. “Also, my pap was a firefighter, and I always enjoyed him talking about firefighting.”

Both girls face challenges as any Junior Firefighter would, but some challenges are more difficult than others.

“The hardest part about what I do as of now is keeping up with fundraisers,” said Abby. “But, for firefighters, it’s living with the things you see.”

“The hardest thing about what I do is knowing that we can save lives, but no matter how hard we try we can’t save them all,” said Mckenzie.