Mr Whitcombe lives about 100m from the Marton Fire Station and does not usually check his pager before showing up.
He was 22 when he joined, and while he is used to death and the odd gory sight, the first fatal crash he went to still sticks in his mind.
"A guy went through a stop sign and he had done it every morning, just not stopped, always gone through it. There was never anyone there. This morning there was someone there."
The man was alive when firefighters arrived, but they were unable to free him from the wreckage in time. Mr Whitcombe remembered the moment the dead man's hand fell on to his leg as he searched his pockets for ID.
"That freaked me right out. I put that out of my mind until we had finished everything off."
After the callout he went home to talk to his father about it. "The best thing is to talk about it so you're not holding on to it. I didn't even get to finish before our pagers went off."
While he had never spoken of the incident again, he still occasionally thought of it, he said.
Mr Whitcombe has done a variety of things on the job, from attending car accidents and house fires to rescuing a small child trapped under a house or rushing out to save a woman from some smoking yams.
"This lady was standing on her front porch, screaming," he said.
"There was a little bit of smoke. She was cooking yams in the microwave, there was no water in there."
Two fire trucks and a police car turned up for yams, he said.
While Mr Whitcombe loves volunteering for the fire service, he was not expecting the brigade to be so understaffed.
It was difficult for them to get two trucks out for a call during the day, because they did not have enough firefighters, and those who were in the brigade were unavailable at work.
It is a problem for volunteer fire services around the Rangitikei and Ruapehu districts.
Rangitikei's six volunteer brigades in Bulls, Hunterville, Mangaweka, Taihape, Ratana and Marton are down a third, or 41 volunteers, on their minimum total of 125, Wanganui area commander Bernie Rush said.
In Ruapehu, its six brigades, in Taumarunui, Owhango, Manunui, Whakapapa, National Park, and Raetihi need 30 firefighters to bring them up to their minimum recommended level of 115.
Mr Whitcombe said it is well worth joining.
"It's a satisfying thing to do, to know you've helped someone. It sounds cheesy, but it's family."
Tash Richmond from the Hunterville volunteer service would say the same thing.
The 31-year-old and her husband Murray Richmond are both in their local fire service - the pair used the fire truck as their wedding car.
Mrs Richmond, known by her fellow firefighters as Mrs Muzz, loves the community spirit in their service, and said it was like "another family".
"I really enjoy the community side of it, knowing that I'm helping the community."
She loved attending parades and educating schoolchildren.
She and her husband were hard at work during the recent flooding and had to evacuate an elderly woman from her home. "The poor lady gets flooded every time it rains."
They put the woman in a motel for night, but returned to the flooded house on her request.
The woman, who had no family locally, "really, really wanted her phone".
So, as Mrs Richmond and her husband waded through rising water searching for the phone with no luck, their chief asked the woman what the phone number was.
The chief then called the firefighters, telling them they could stop looking for it, because the phone was a landline. It was something they laughed about later, she said.
But the job is not always fun or light-hearted. It was always hard heading to a car accident and not knowing if it was a local, Mrs Richmond said. She had once attended a fatal accident involving a girl who had previously lived with her.
"Being female I had a good cry," she said. "I suppose everyone deals with it in a different way."
Mrs Richmond was one of two female firefighters in the Hunterville brigade, and suspected women did not join because they had a perception they would not be physically capable.
While she found strength-related work harder, they always worked as teams, and there were techniques to "make things easier", she said. She also felt women were better at calming people down in emergencies.
She suggested people who did not want to do the work could volunteer to look after firefighters' kids while they attended callouts.
Taihape volunteer Matt Hobbs said people did not need to worry they would be pushed into doing tasks they were uncomfortable with.
"The good thing about the fire brigade is, if it's not your thing, there's no obligation to get in and do that sort of thing," Mr Hobbs said.
"I would say just give it a go. Come on down every Monday night, have a look at what we do.
"I don't know whether some people are put off because they think they're not capable of doing it or there's a physical element, or they don't like attending the nasty calls, or if they think they don't have time. All of us tick some of those boxes at one time or another. You don't have to be at a call, you do what you can. If you're not available then it's no biggie."
The 42-year-old said volunteers in the Taihape brigade were always on the lookout for recruits, and also someone to act as its training officer.
"It's a commitment that nobody's been prepared to take on," he said, adding it needed to be the type of person who did not have too many other commitments. Joining the brigade was "a really worthwhile thing".
"We just need people to really have a crack to be honest."
Bulls volunteer Damian Herlihy joined at 17 and was operational at 18. The now 22-year-old said the fire service training prepared him well for real callouts.
"Everything we go to is interesting, is different ... you never have the same job twice," Mr Herlihy said. "It's something that I enjoy doing."
His work in the brigade helped him "look at things from a bigger picture" and the role also gave him qualifications and skills he could apply to other areas of his life.
The Bulls brigade, like the others, was low on volunteers that can attend calls during the day.
Miki Te Moananui from the Ratana Fire Brigade said being part of the team was like being part of a "big family".
The 45-year-old and his fellow firefighters had to jump in the fire truck and drive around Ratana recently after reports of an explosion, but were unable to find anything. Reports later arose of people hearing the loud rumbling noise all the way from Turakina to Waitotara. It remains unexplained.
Mr Te Moananui said the Ratana brigade had only three recruits that were qualified to wear breathing gear, and they were unable to attend a call with any less than four.
He loved working with the public and saving lives, but said his favourite part of the job was coming home safely from an incident.
"When we go out on an incident we go out as a team of four and come back as a team of four."