Smaller communities need more support to make sure their volunteer firefighters are better trained, according to the B.C. Association of Fire Chiefs.

While large communities can generally afford good equipment and to train volunteers, it's a financial strain for small towns, said Langley Fire Chief Stephen Gamble.

"We've heard stories of firefighters using their own money to get trained," Gamble told CTV News. "I've heard firefighters conducting bake sales to get their own equipment."

Right now, only one in 10 volunteer firefighters has the training required to go into a burning building, according to a recent report that made several recommendations to improve firefighting in B.C. A 12-week course at the Justice Institute costs as much as $10,000.

"It puts a real strain on the firefighters," Gamble said. "You could lose firefighters coming out and volunteering because it puts a real strain on them."

Training was a major issue in 2004 in Clearwater when volunteer firefighter Chad Schapansky died on the job. He fell through the floor of a burning Clearwater restaurant. He didn't have a radio and a colleague used a cell phone to call for help.

A coroner's report recommended establishing a minimum training standard for volunteer firefighters and auditing the departments to make sure they lived up to it.

Now, the Clearwater department trains regularly, as does the Enderby department, where 29-year-old Dan Botkin died fighting a blaze at a log home business in Enderby Thursday morning.

Botkin trained at a Vernon facility where firefighters could practice on a real burning building, said the Enderby fire chief, Mike Smith.

However Gamble said that while there is now a province-wide training standard, the training levels are different depending on the town.

Provincial deputy fire commissioner Dave Ferguson told CTV News that the province helps local communities apply for grants but ultimately the funding is up to them.

Ferguson said he was looking into the recommendations in the recent report, Transforming the Fire Service, and said the province would respond to the recommendations by October 2012.

Investigators were at the site of the Enderby fire on Friday, but they were still assessing if it was safe to enter the structure to conduct an inquiry into the cause of the fatal blaze.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward