The Iberia Parish Fire Department is facing many of the same issues that are plaguing first responders throughout the country, but, despite the hurdles, are still providing top-notch service.

According to Iberia Parish Fire Chief Guy Bonin, there are several misconceptions about how fires are handled in the parish and who will respond when you call 911.

“A lot of people don’t realize that in Iberia Parish, there are two paid fire departments,” he explained. “The city has a department that covers about 11.5 square miles, and my department covers a little bit more at around 480 square miles. We go past Jeanerette, past Loreauville and halfway into Delcambre. We do all of that utilizing two stations and four volunteer departments.”

That large coverage area would be difficult to manage for a fully-staffed fire department, but Bonin also has to contend with staffing shortages and a dwindling supply of volunteers.

“State-wide, our volunteers are down. When I started, we had about 80 active volunteers,” Bonin said. “I’m down to about 15 now, but that’s not 15 that I’m going to get all at one time. During daytime hours, when they are working, I very seldom get them.”

Career firefighters are also hard to come by right now. Bonin, who has space for 30 employees but currently only has 27, said he had gotten used to having a long list of applicants to choose from. Now, fire departments across the state are offering cash bonuses just to entice new recruits.

Despite the struggles, the IPFPD responded to almost 3100 calls for service in 2023, working 1472 medical calls, 302 motor vehicle accidents, 20 structure fires and 14 vehicle fires in Iberia Parish.

Bonin said that his department is often questioned about why they respond to so many medical calls, but given their response time, it’s a matter of life and death.

“Our medical calls make up a large portion of our calls. A lot of people still ask me why we run medical calls when we have an ambulance service. When we beat the ambulance to over 95% of calls and you’re sitting there waiting for them, you love seeing us,” he said.

Bonin said that his department is also handling a large number of overdosing events throughout the parish.

“I think that right now our biggest issue is overdosing,” Bonin said. “You don’t hear about it unless you see the numbers on TV, but we have a huge problem in Iberia Parish. Heroin, opioids, all of that stuff. For us to have two or three a month is not a big deal. We carry Narcan with us now and if we didn’t, the death toll would be astronomically high.”

Bonin also said that his department responds to several medical calls that might not qualify for other first responder services, but still require assistance.

“We do a lot and we don’t stop at the normal things that people think that we do. There are a lot of elderly people that fall in their house and Acadian can’t go unless it’s for an injury, so we go,” he said. “That gets kind of abused at times. There’s a lot of things like that that we do that people don’t see.”

For anyone interested in learning more about a career with the Iberia Parish Fire Protection District, visit https://ipfpd.com/careers/ or call 337-365-5872.