ROANOKE, Va. – There’s a new tool to help recruit first responders in the Roanoke Valley.
Valley Metro recently donated a bus to Roanoke Fire-EMS.
Chief David Hoback said they'll use the bus primarily to transport recruits to off-site training exercises. It will also be essentially a rolling billboard for the three agencies that team up for training: Roanoke city, Roanoke County and Salem.
They'll wrap the bus with pictures of their crews at work and contact information for people to apply for jobs.
"The workforce or the application pool is starting to go down a little bit, so we've had to be creative. We're using social media issues, or we're using this as far as a bus to get that out, or we're canvassing neighborhoods or canvassing areas that we feel are our target areas for people who may want to work for us," Hoback said.
They hope to debut the bus at this year's Christmas parade.