SCARBOROUGH – The Scarborough Fire Department has hired four new firefighters who will start work at the first of the year.

Together, they boost the department’s roster to 24 full-time firefighters.

“This hiring process included the largest number of applicants that we have ever seen – over 80 – with many very qualified candidates,” said Fire Chief Mike Thurlow. “In addition to these new hires we have established a fresh eligibility list of 20 qualified applicants who did very well through the process and who will be eligible for any future positions over the next 18 months.”

According to Thurlow, new full-time firefighters have been needed on his department for quite some time. A staffing analysis last updated in March shows emergency alarms have risen 232 percent in the last 32 years, from 1,048 calls for service in 1980 to 3,874 in 2012. However, during that same time period, the number of volunteer firefighters in town has dropped 63.5 percent, from 318 to 116. Today, Pine Point is the most active call-company station, with 14 members. Others have five or six, barely enough to field a working fire crew.

Meanwhile, the number of full-time firefighters has held steady for the past several years. Thurlow has been trying to get the four new hires since 2006, when a previous study concluded he had too few on staff for a town the size of Scarborough, given its rate of growth.

Since 1980, Scarborough has grown in population 171 percent, from 7,000 to 19,000, while the number of businesses has quadrupled from 400 to 1,600. Even so, the fire department did not have a full-time paramedic on staff until 1989.

This past spring, the Town Council finally agreed to the new hires as part of the 2013-2014 budget, but at the 11th hour in May elected to save $44,290 from the $28.2 million municipal budget by delaying the hiring until January.

Three of the new hires were previously per-diem employees of the department, while the fourth is an Alaska resident bringing his family back east as his wife is from the area.

The new hires include:

• Joseph Wilber, of Sanford, where he is a temporary full-time firefighter/EMT, having started as a volunteer there in 2009. He also has picked up per-diem shifts in Scarborough since June 2012 while also working as an on-call lieutenant for Waterboro Fire & Rescue. He is training to be a paramedic and is expected to be licensed in May. Wilber will start work in Scarborough on New Year’s Day assigned to Rescue-1 alongside Cindy Gorham.

• Brian Ackley also has worked as a per diem firefighter in Scarborough since June 2012. He lives in Topsham where he has been a firefighter since 2007, most recently working as the department’s live-in student adviser. Ackley holds an associate’s degree in fire science technology from Southern Maine Community College and is enrolled in a similar bachelor’s degree program at Southern New Hampshire University. He expects to finish his paramedic training and be licensed before his Jan. 1 start date in Scarborough, where he will be partnered with Mike DiClemente on Rescue-2.

• Ben Wildes started his career in the fire service as a volunteer in Hancock in 2007 and joined Scarborough’s live-in student program through SMCC in 2011, working per-diem shifts and winning the Student-of-the-Year award this past year. An Eagle Scout, Wildes also earned a fire science degree from SMCC. Licensed at the EMT-I level, he plans to enroll in a paramedic program in the near future. His full-time work will begin Jan. 2 when he joins the Rescue-2 crew housed at the Dunstan Corner Fire Station, paired with Adele Jones.

• Andrew Breitbeil currently lives in Soldotna, Alaska, and works full-time as a firefighter/EMT-I in Kenai, having also served on a large urban fire department in Houston, Texas. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and has experience as a juvenile justice officer working with underage arsonists. Breitbeil is completing an associate’s program in paramedical technology and expects to be licensed as a paramedic in Maine before moving here for a Feb. 5 start date. He will work Rescue-2 alongside Jeremy Moreau.