In 1962 the Bayou Cane Volunteer Fire District came into existence. Since then, the district has grown from an entire Volunteer staff to a career staff with volunteers. The district has had 7 Fire Chiefs. These men are:

• Ted A. Torres 1963-64
• C. Ray Bergeron 1965-68
• Pete Chaisson 1969-70
• Ed Jackson 1971
• Edgar Babin 1974, 75, 78
• Donald Lasseigne 1976, 77
• Jerry Gautreaux 1972, 73, 79-2008
• Charles Long 2008-present

The first 6 Fire Chiefs were exclusively volunteer until the early 1980’s when the district hired volunteer Jerry Gautreaux as a firefighter. Shortly thereafter he was voted in as the first paid Fire Chief for Bayou Cane.

The current Fire Chief was selected by a committee formed to pick a new Chief from criteria that included; time served as a volunteer and paid firefighter, certifications, and experience as a Fire Officer.

In the early days, the department did their training with the Houma Fire Department on their training nights. The first method of alerting members of a fire call went like this. The call went through to the Houma fire department first, then they would in turn set off the siren. The siren would sound until someone would answer the phone at the Bayou Cane station. The siren would cut off automatically two minutes after the phone was hung up. Needless to say, calls are dispatched a bit differently nowadays. In the early days, that was a state of the art method for dispatching calls.

We have transitioned from telephone to siren to C.B. Radio to portable radios and pagers. In the mid 1980’s, station #2 was built on West Park Av. and station #3 was built on Savanne Rd. Stations #2 & 3 are slated for remodeling in 2010. They were constructed to better serve the growing community. In 1998, station 4 was built on S. Hollywood Rd. In 2001, the new Central Fire Station was constructed at it’s current location on West Main St., just up the street from where the old Central Station stood. Currently, the Bayou Cane Fire Protection District is rated a #3 by the P.I.A.L. and we are steadily working to improve that rating. The Bayou Cane Fire Protection District is constantly growing and we are diligently working to improve our service to you.