TULITA/FORT NORMAN - It takes a lot of training and a lot of floor sweeping to build the kind of bond necessary to depend on someone else to save your life.

Greg Turnbull knows - he's been a volunteer firefighter for 18 years.

Turnbull, the deputy fire chief of Tulita, said his 12-member volunteer team is one of the most prepared and well trained in the region, earning the Tulita department the 2009 NWT Fire Service Merit Community Award from the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs last month.

"It's recognition of the behind-the-scenes work," Turnbull said. "Most people forget about that. When they see you going to a fire or something exciting, they think that's a great thing, but it's the day-to-day drudgery of washing the truck and scrubbing the hoses and cleaning the hall and all the little dirty kind of mundane jobs that you do that makes up most of the time you spend at the fire department."

His fellow volunteers are some of the most dedicated he's worked with, Turnbull says.

"We've had a hard time getting memberships and it's really taken a long time to build that many people up. When I first got here, the department was not terrifically active, but with the help of Urban (Antoine), the fire chief, we've managed to build up over time."

Turnbull, who works a full-time job as manager of the Northern store, said his love of firefighting developed naturally. He grew up in Dartmouth, N.S., where his father served as a long-time volunteer firefighter, and when Turnbull moved to Fort Liard he joined the fire department there before doing the same in Tulita five years ago.

"It's a good way to contribute to the community, to put something back into the community that is absolutely and totally uncontroversial," he laughed.

"Everybody loves the fire department. There are times when people don't like the police, there are times when people don't like their elected politicians, so rather than running for public office or doing any of the other things within the community, I felt it was a way to provide a positive role model within the community."

A day in the life of a volunteer firefighter usually involves training, fire drills and "a lot of mundane things," Turnbull said those seemingly menial tasks provide a chance for the men - the Tulita department currently has no female volunteers - to develop a sense of camaraderie they'll need to pull through in an emergency.

"While it's fun and you're joking and laughing you know someday you're going to have to put your life in that other guy's hands and vice versa so there's kind of a bond or a kinship there that you don't get in any other profession," Turnbull said.

He'll always remember the fire that had the firefighters out of their beds and over to the school just after 5 a.m. on Oct. 8, 2007. An arsonist set the fire deliberately by piling wood on a chair against an outer wall and lighting it ablaze, causing more than $500,000 in damages and hours of gruelling work for firefighters.

"Since I joined the department here, that was our biggest challenge, our biggest fire. It certainly brought the department together in a lot of ways and tested our mettle in a lot of ways," Turnbull said. "I'm really proud of how the guys handled that fire, you know, limiting the damage and doing all of the things that needed to be done."