Hopedale added eight call firefighters to its roster in one fell swoop Monday night.
“This is like an eclipse,” Selectman Thomas Wesley said Monday night, as the new group stood before his board. “You talk about the blue wall. This is incredible.”
Selectmen approved the group - Jeffrey Cote, Alex Cappella, Conor Sayles, Jake Carnaroli, Daniel Seaver, Jamie Henderson, Matthew Kelley and Michael Trudel - and seven of the eight were immediately sworn in. Sayles was taking a paramedics course that evening, Fire Chief Thomas Daige told selectmen.
“We’ve never hired that many at once,” Deputy Fire Chief David McMurrow said Tuesday. “It brings us up to pretty much full staffing.”
The department received an influx of applications, he said, and decided to give them all a chance, initially as candidates.