They put their lives on the line every day. Now, firefighters in Bell County are hoping funding cuts won't affect their training.

Sondra Goodin with the Bell County Volunteer Fire Department says the state requires any person who wants to be a certified firefighter to have 150 hours of training, but Goodin says recent budget cuts have not made it easy for firefighters to get the training they need.

Besides the fire inside the training tower, fire officials with the Bell County Volunteer Fire Department say they are fighting budget cuts from the state.

“That is the big problem that we are seeing right now: a lot of financial cuts around the state. It is playing a pinch everybody,” says Larrel Alley, an instructor.

“Usually April is our fire school but we couldn't come up with everything in April so we had to do it here in June,” says Sondra Goodin of Bell County VFD.

Goodin says volunteer instructors from nearby Harlan, Whitley, Bell County, and as far as Fayette County made it possible for the region to make budget and host the weekend training sessions.

Instructors we talked to say they are glad to pitch in and teach future fire fighters.

“A lot of these fire departments they being volunteer they don't have time to get everybody together to train. It takes a lot of instructors and a lot of people to do a burn like this,” says Alley.

“We are just short budgeted right now to what we can do,” says Goodin.

Fire officials estimate 200 to 400 volunteer fire fighters received training at the school.

Goodin says the biggest reason why department budgets are tighter after cuts from the state is high fuel cost.