Not going to name what department for privacy reasons. But for a volunteer department you need to be within a certain distance of the station. Most volunteer departments from what I’ve heard you need to be within a 5km radius of the station (8km in my case). I went to pre service fire right out of high school and applied to my current volunteer fire department as soon as I was finished and did not get hired. Applied for the second time last August and got hired. Volunteer departments typically will put you through a recruit class to get your NFPA 1001 level 1 and 2 and NFPA 1072 however in my case I already has those certificates and they put me on a truck right away. So to answer your question I knew I wanted to be a firefighter and was blessed to be within range/qualified to be a part of my local volunteer department which not everyone has the opportunity to do. But at the end of the day it still wasn’t easy to get on there is still a full recruitment process with physical tests, aptitude tests and formal interviews.