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Oxon Hill resident Moriah Anderson applied for his dream job as a firefighter with the Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department in 2006. In December, the department finally called him back.

Anderson, 26, is one of the 40 recruits who began training in the county's fire academy on Feb. 1. The men and women comprise the department's first academy class in two years.

"I've been waiting for this opportunity," Anderson, a former physical trainer at a local gym, said on his fifth day of training. "When they called, I just told my job that I'm going to go do this for the fire department."

Anderson previously worked as a physical trainer in New York but moved back to the county, where he grew up, for a new job. He had never considered working as a firefighter, but a run-in with a department recruiter at a career fair in 2006 changed his mind.

The recruits selected for the 40 available slots in the training academy have been waitlisted since 2007, with recruits coming from a variety of backgrounds, said Maj. LeRoy Smith, director of the academy in Cheltenham.

Budget restraints during the last several years prevented the department from holding any new classes despite the fact that older employees were retiring at a rapid rate. Currently, 200 of the fire department's 701 sworn employees are eligible for retirement. Firefighters and other county public safety officials can retire at age 55 or after 20 years of service, with a pension payment of 60 percent of their average final salary, according to the county Office of Human Resources Management.

Despite the training costs, the class had to start now to prevent the decline in staffing from negatively affecting emergency services, said Battalion Chief Neal Dennis, chief of staff in the county's Department of Public Safety. Running the training academy for the session costs $250,000, which includes the recruits' pay for that time.

"We need as many classes as we can get," Capt. Grady Valencis, a supervisor at the academy.

More than half the recruits said they had given up hope they would ever get a call back from the department.  

The new recruits will undergo five months of paid training, which will cover emergency medical technician life-saving skills, fire equipment use and operation, protocol on the scene of a fire, hazardous materials procedures and survival training. Only about one or two recruits drop out of the training classes every couple of sessions, Valencis said, so instructors expect all of the recruits to graduate. If recruits fail in an area of training, they can still reapply for the academy in a later recruit class.

During the first week, subjects such as nutrition, physical fitness and teamwork are emphasized.

When recruits need to use the bathroom, for example, they are required to go with a buddy, Valencis said. It is a practice that reinforces the idea that no one should wander off alone on the scene of a fire in case something goes wrong.

When the punishment for wearing the wrong clothing or not answering a question correctly is running laps or doing pushups, recruits quickly learn to work together as a team, some said.

"We've all improved as a team so far," said recruit Karrie DeMarr, 26, of St. Mary's County, looking back on the first five days of her training. "On the first day we were a mess."

For DeMarr, like Anderson, the wait to become a firefighter has been a long time coming. A graduate of Gwynn Park High School in Brandywine, DeMarr said she always dreamed of working in public safety. But the birth of her first child soon after graduation put the brakes on her career aspirations, and she became a stay-at-home mom and operated a side-business hauling construction equipment for Amish builders. 

"I always was interested but having children really isn't convenient to hanging out at the firehouse," she said. 

Now that her children are older — ages 5 and 7 — and with the support of her fiancé, DeMarr said she finally has the time to attend the academy. Since it has been a while since she was in a classroom, DeMarr said the looming assignments and tests are intimidating.

"Sometimes I think to myself, ‘Am I going to be able to keep up with all the classroom stuff?'" she said. "I feel better when I'm outside doing the [physical training] stuff."

While the majority of the recruits applied for jobs at several fire departments, recruit Tervel Butler, 21, of Landover said he was excited to join the county department because of its reputation for good training and for being busy.

"Most of the people who want this job want to be busy," Dennis said, adding the Washington, D.C. department would be the only one in the immediate area that would be busier.

Last year the county department responded to 122,600 calls for service. The District department responded to more than 150,000 incidents, while the Montgomery County department handles on average 100,000 incidents a year. The Fairfax County, Va., department handled more than 92,000 in 2009.

The fact that the recruits will also be subjected to furloughs like the rest of county government employees due to budget cuts had little impact on their decision to come to the county, those who were interviewed said.

Each Friday, recruits are sent home at noon so that by the time they complete training, they will have completed their required 40 furlough hours for the fiscal year, Dennis said. 

Whether the furloughs continue next fiscal year or not, the department plans to hire more personnel. However they do not know how many new recruits that will include, Dennis said.

E-mail Andrea Noble at anoble@gazette.net.