Meet Chad Ekdahl, Western Salisbury Volunteer Firefighter

Name: Chad Ekdahl

Age: 44

Lives: Salisbury Township

Family: Chad and Michele Ekdahl have 8-year-old twins (a son and daughter).

Job: Carpenter for R.J. Doerr historic restoration company, Easton.

Fire company:

Training so far: Firefighter 1 (nationally recognized level of training).

What's it like being a firefighter? It’s exciting, and pretty rewarding. The bottom line is helping people and saving properties. 

How do your loved ones feel about you putting your life in danger? I guess they are comfortable with it because they know a lot of training goes on, and the number one priority is safety. Safety comes first. And we have state of the art equipment to help us.

Tell us a story you'll never forget about your firefighting experience. We’ve had only a few house fires – I’ll never forget those. No one got hurt, and it was no big daring rescue, but they were pretty intense. We have more car fires or accidents than we have real working fires, but that’s the way it should be.

What would you tell people interested in joining your fire company: You have to want to do it. It’s a big time commitment. Training takes time. Mainly you’d join because you want to be a fire fighter. But other things that go along with it —camaraderie, doing things, making friends, helping each other out —make it pretty nice.