Lake City, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – Aug. 22, 2025 – The Lake City Fire Department announced its very first Junior Firefighter Program, which will open to area high school students.
The program will work two-fold for students, Lake City Fire Chief Hunter Timms said. It will give them a chance to get their community service hours now required to graduate, as well as a possible career path.
“It gives kids an avenue to see a whole new career in a line of work that they may have never thought about doing, while giving back to their community,” Timms said. “When they get out of school, they can go get on a full-time department somewhere, too. A lot of kids get pushed on college, but there’s a need for firefighters all over this country.”
Although the program is based in Lake City, which is home to many Riverside Public Schools students, it will also be open to Caraway High School students and surrounding homeschool students as well.
It will begin in mid-October, and students can choose to participate through graduation, with summer hours also available. Students will meet twice a month at the Lake City firehouse once the program begins.
The new program was the brainchild of volunteer firefighters Adam Terrell and Carl Gallapoo.
While the program is designed to provide students with full training in firefighting, Terrell said it will also introduce students to other forms of first responding as well, such as emergency medical services and police. He added that students won’t respond to fires due to liability issues.
“We’re going to try to include all first responders, not just strictly fire. That way, kids have more of an expansion about what they want to do,” Terrell said, noting guest speakers from Medic One EMTs and the Lake City Police Department are already lined up.
According to Gallapoo, he and Terrell had been talking about the need for this type of program for a while, and after receiving approval from Timms, they went straight to work figuring out the details.
“Mr. [Matt] Ziegler, the principal [of Riverside High School] is really pushing for it too,” Terrell said. “He already said that this will be an amazing thing, not only just for the high school, for our fire department, and for the community, because it gets the kids off the streets, and nowadays that’s a big thing because it’s so easy to get peer pressured into something.”
Prospective applicants must be 16 or 17 years old. If accepted to the program, applicants must maintain a 2.0 GPA and maintain “appropriate behavior” in and outside of school.
The department will begin taking applications on Aug. 25 and will stop taking them Sept. 12. After the application window closes, Galapoo said applicants will then have to pass a physical fitness test, which will be on Sept. 20.
The test will contain multiple parts, including a hose drag, where participants will drag a full hose 100 feet out from a fire hydrant; a farmer’s carry, where participants will carry two full 5-gallon buckets 50 feet and back; a ladder carry, where participants will carry a ladder 50 feet; a drag, where participants will drag weights 50 feet; and a stair climb, where participants will run up and down stairs twice.
All parts must be completed in under three minutes.
Next, participants will complete an interview on Sept. 21. There will be a select number of students per year. Seniors who pass the fitness test and interview will be selected first.
For more information, call Terrell at 870-926-1433 or Gallapoo at 870-227-3613.
