AMELIA, Ohio — A fire lieutenant who has served Batavia Township and the Village of Batavia since 2009 is the latest firefighter featured in his department’s ongoing “Meet Your Firefighters” series, which introduces residents to the men and women staffing the community’s fire stations.
Jared Shouse works as a lieutenant on C Shift at Station 11 in Amelia, one of two stations run by the fire department, according to a post from the agency. Shouse said in the post that the district’s coverage area — a mix of busy commercial corridors, growing neighborhoods and rural farmland — keeps the job different every day.
The department, which serves Batavia Township and the Village of Batavia as Central Joint Fire-EMS District, was formed in 2002 after voters in the township and village approved combining fire protection into a single agency. The move unified coverage that had previously been split between a township fire and rescue department in the north and a separate volunteer company in the south, according to the district. Today the department operates two stations — Station 10, its headquarters on Old State Route 32 in Batavia, and Station 11 on state Route 125 in Amelia — and responds to more than 4,600 calls a year, the district said. Fire-EMS Chief Roy Short Jr., who joined the department at its founding in 2002, now leads the agency.
Beyond the firehouse, Shouse said he is a father who spends much of his free time driving his children to sports and other activities. He also volunteers as a delivery lead coordinator for the Clermont County chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a national nonprofit that builds and delivers free beds to children ages 3 to 17 who don’t have one of their own, according to the organization. The group, whose mission statement holds that “all children deserve a safe, comfortable place to lay their heads,” has delivered nearly 400,000 beds across North America through more than 400 volunteer-run chapters since it began.
Shouse is also a member of the Clermont County Fire Investigation Team, a countywide unit made up of certified investigators drawn from local fire departments that determines the cause and origin of fires when called upon. The team operates in coordination with the Fire and EMS Chiefs Alliance of Clermont County, a consortium of 17 fire and EMS departments across the county.
The fire department said it plans to continue introducing residents to more of its firefighters in future posts.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Batavia Township Fire Department and public information from Central Joint Fire-EMS District and Sleep in Heavenly Peace.