A local fire department is celebrating its silver anniversary this month. 

In June of 1994, the Swift Current Rural Fire Department was formed and had been serving the RM of Swift Current and surrounding RMs for 25 years. 

Louis Cherpin, the fire chief for the Swift Current Rural Fire Department, said that it all started due to some conflict. 

"There were some disagreements between the two parties prior to the making of the fire department," he said. "The RM of Swift Current decided to venture out on their own and start their own fire department for the safety of the rural community." 

Cherpin has been with the department since October 1994 and said he's proud to see the growth of the department in that time. 

"We started in 1994 with seven members and today I'm proud to say that we have 14 fully qualified firefighters dedicated to the safety of the rural area. I'm pretty excited about where we are and where we are going. It's going to get better as we go forward," Cherpin said. "When we started in 1994 it was kind of all pieced together with equipment here and there. Over the years I'm proud to say that we've been able to add some very nice pieces of apparatuses and we were able to expand our role in auto-extrication. We started out off basically a firefighter department, and now we have come full circle, and we are able to handle everything confidently that is thrown at us." 

The 14 Swift Current rural firefighters are a part of over 7,000 volunteer firefighters in Saskatchewan, some Cherpin added is a great community to be a part of. 

"Even though it is a volunteer department when a call comes, we drop everything we are doing, and we go and do our job. We do the best we can, and I think we are a top-notch fire department in Saskatchewan. There are times we've missed a meal, an anniversary during fire calls. We've missed some important anniversaries and things like that, but we are all dedicated. We know what we sign up when we sign up to be a firefighter and a volunteer firefighter." 

Cherpin added that they are holding a celebrating of their 25 years of service sometime later this year in the fall.