Finding enough volunteers and the time for training is a struggle for some small-town fire departments.

In Sherman, the volunteer fire department continues to discuss whether it should dissolve. No decisions were made at Tuesday’s town meeting, though, said Gerry Karpen, a Sherman Town Board trustee.

"We had another long discussion and we put it back on the agenda for the next meeting," Karpen said.

Due to difficulty finding enough volunteers to meet the minimum required staff numbers, along with the pending retirement of its fire chief, Neil Winterton, the department may soon be dissolving.

"We're a town of 90 people," Karpen said. "People hate to let it go after all of these years, but it's kind of hard to find 15 people to staff."

Though Winterton continues to respond to calls until an official decision has been made, he said it has become increasingly difficult finding the time for all the work involved.

"It's been a lot of work for a small department," he said. "Just going to these training things and this and that. It’s really hard to get volunteers."

If the department dissolves, all calls in the Sherman area will now be routed to the Garretson Volunteer Fire Department, but Fire Chief Mark Caauwe said it won't be a burden on his staff. Garretson is about five miles from Sherman.

"It really won't affect us at all," he said. "Ten years ago, an agreement was made where Garretson would respond to every call, so we've been going there for the past 10 years anyway."

Michael Koopman, fire chief for the Baltic Volunteer Fire Department and president of the Minnehaha County Rural Fire Chief's Association, said it's sometimes a struggle for smaller communities such as Sherman to keep their department's running.

"They struggle to get the numbers," he said. "It's unfortunate and I don't like to see it happen, you just need people to keep at it."

Koopman said other volunteer departments in the area seem to be doing fine. Baltic, for example, has 26 volunteers.

"I don't see any let downs," he said. "All the other departments seem to have good, active people and are in growing areas. Everybody seems to be holding their own. The biggest struggle is trying to keep up with training."

Bill Fink, fire chief for the Harrisburg Volunteer Fire Department, said staff numbers are good and the number of volunteers who respond are usually high. The biggest problem their department has, he said, is finding day time help and people able to keep up with required training.

"Sherman is probably sitting in the same place we are," he said. "We're so close to Sioux Falls that everyone goes there for work. It's hard to find people for the day time, but a lot of people just can't give up the time to do training."

Karpen said while Sherman has the minimum number of people on staff, the actual number that would respond would usually not be the same.

"We have 15 names on a roster, but I think we might have two or three firefighters that might respond to a situation," he said. "Part of it is because of the lack of jobs here. The fire chief isn't even in town during the day; he's in Sioux Falls."

Koopman said the amount of time required to be a volunteer is just too much for some people to juggle along with their already busy lives.

On average, he said his department spends about 250 hours per month for training, work detail and meetings.

"That doesn't count the time spent away from home on calls," he said. "A lot of times there gets to be more. There's always something going on."

Winterton said the issue of the Sherman department will be discussed again at the next town meeting on Nov. 6.

"I guess we’re kind of in limbo,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait and see."