My Fourth of July followed the same routine as it has for the past five years, starting with the Baileys Harbor (Wis.) Volunteer Fire Department’s Pancake Breakfast.
According to Chief Don Prust, this was the the best one yet. “We served 750 breakfasts, up from 735 last year, and raised about $2,500,” he said. The money will go into a fund for either a six-wheeler or a watercraft for the marina across the street.
Besides the sliding pancake griddle and the chef who flips the pancakes to your plate, I enjoy watching the people come to the fire station for breakfast. It’s a real family event, from babies in strollers to grandparents, all standing in line for breakfast. It’s not so much that the pancakes are outstanding or that the experience of eating on tables in the fire station is compelling, but I think there’s a real desire to support the local fire department that draws people to line up and wait.
I commented to another local fire chief that the event really brought back memories of having hot dogs after parades in my Dad’s volunteer department. Our family’s social life really revolved around fire department functions.
“Not any more,” said the chief. “There’s no free time.” He explained there is not the socializing there used to be, and that a lot of the wives work second jobs in addition to juggling kids and schedules.
The latest issue of VFIS News, published by the Glatfelter Insurance Group, includes “Recruitment and Retention for 21st Century Emergency Services” by Chief Bill Jenaway, Ph.D., executive vice president for VFIS Education & Training Services.
According to Jenaway, “Only a decade ago, there were over one million volunteer firefighters. These numbers have dropped to just 800,000 and the bleeding continues.”
Through a USFA grant to the National Volunteer Fire Council, research resulted in three key “findings statements” that must be understood before approaching issues of recruitment and retention:
- Recruitment and retention are local problems — the needs, leadership and challenges are all local.
- Recruitment is marketing, and you must market all the time. A needs assessment is critical to making sure you invest your time appropriately.
- You need to know what your members want as benefits before you choose incentives.
The article also offers some interesting insight into why people join and why they quit a volunteer department. A PDF of the article is available from the VFIS Web site.
How can a volunteer fire department educate its community about the value it offers? Pancake breakfasts and brat fries are good for public relations, but maybe some educating on the costs of a volunteer versus a paid department might be in order, too.
I’d like to take a moment to say thanks to all those who invest their time and energy to volunteer with local fire departments. Thanks for caring!
July 6th, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
Brings back memories. Perhaps an information table at such events may help; poster, etc., showing the different costs, like $500,000 to $1 million per paid company in major cities.
July 6th, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
My town is a small bedroom community and it is really hard to get new members on the department. When the time comes after they are trained and the alarm goes off at 2 a.m. and they must go to work that day, they decide this isn’t for them. Recruitment is an ongoing process, and after 18 years as chief, I feel that volunteer departments must think about regionalization. It is getting hard to provide the services people want with a handful of members.
July 6th, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
Fire Prevention Week is an excellent opportunity to host your community at your fire station. Not only can you educate families about fire prevention, but it is also an opportunity to put on a show about your fire company and really educate attendees about what it takes to operate such organizations.
Regarding why volunteer firefighters’ families’ social lives don’t revolve around company functions, there’s just no time anymore. Many departments have experienced an increase in call volume. We’re at the firehouse more and more. Events such as pancake breakfasts used to be a way for us to see each other and catch up, because we weren’t at the firehouse for calls four to five times a week. Couple that with training requirements, and we’re pretty lucky we can even pull off pancake breakfasts anymore.
July 6th, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
I think people forget sometimes that the majority of the fire service is comprised of volunteer firefighters. Even when we see the “Volunteer America” campaign on television, we don’t see the fire service mentioned as one of the great services where people can give of their time. I’m not sure why that is, but I have a hunch it has to do with the way we volunteers in the fire service conduct ourselves in such a professional manner. We still have some work ahead of us to lift up some struggling brothers and sisters, and more volunteers and training will help us achieve that goal. Thank you for your efforts and your recognition of what volunteers do and mean to our communities.
July 6th, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
Coming from a true rural community, I find it very difficult to recruit and retain volunteers due to the fact that most of the people in our district have to travel 30 minutes to and from work. In most cases both spouses work, sometimes opposite shifts. This makes it very hard for them to participate due to child care. What happens when the well finally runs dry? I have bent the ears of our local politicians suggesting incentives for volunteers such as tax breaks or reduced tuition for colleges, etc. I will never surrender. Thank goodness for mutual aid.
July 6th, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
“Recruitment and retention are local problems — the needs, leadership and challenges are all local.”
Based on the comments, it appears the “NATIONAL” Volunteer Fire Council considers itself a local organization. These comments echo my department’s challenges. I somehow suspect that the authors of these comments come from different parts of the country, not different parts of a county. If this is true, then recruitment and retention is a national, instead of a local problem.
“Recruitment is marketing, and you must market all the time. A needs assessment is critical to making sure you invest your time appropriately.”
Maybe if volunteer departments were to get six- to seven-figure grants to fund marketing and needs assessment?
“You need to know what your members want as benefits before you choose incentives.”
Until federal (not local) tax laws are changed, there are very few incentives which can be given to members without having to file a 1099.
Local problem — NOT
July 6th, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
Our fire company is located in a blue-collar bedroom community that supports us very well. With three companies in our township and a one-company response to fire alarms, our run totals aren’t unreasonable. What I see is a good amount of volunteers from 4 p.m. to 6 a.m. — it’s the “day shift” that’s typically light.
I would like to see our lawmakers work on incentives for businesses that allow their workers out during the day to fight fires. Perhaps businesses would then take an active role in hiring firefighters and/or encourage their employees to join up. I think a symposium with business owners and local, county, state and federal elected representatives would be able to drive out some innovative ideas. We need to actively promote in our own communities those businesses that do allow volunteers out, too.
We can keep the volunteer system alive but we have to adapt and be willing to get “outside our box.”
July 6th, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
When I first came into the fire service some 20 years ago, we had a full roster of people waiting to join. Now I’ve watched at least a dozen people come and go, and we are down at least 10 members in my company alone.
We as a whole need to always be recruiting. Several of us were out last night just doing some hydrant drills, and I noticed about a dozen or so people watching us. Unfortunately, I could not break away and talk to them, but it does remind me that we should have at least one person able to talk to the public when we are drilling, and maybe if 12 people are there watching, one — if we’re lucky two — will join.
July 7th, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
I have been fortunate enough to be a volunteer for 32 years, and I wouldn’t trade a moment of it. The time and effort put in have more than been repaid in life-long friends, personal growth and a sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, I sometimes see myself and my 50-year-old cohort group as the last of the dinosaurs. Things are different today (yes, we’ve all heard that before). Living in the Northeast, the cost of living is high and housing costs are worse. The firefighter who worked a 40-hour-a-week day job is now holding down a part-time job, too, or must stay home with the kids because the spouse has to work also and childcare isn’t cheap. Now you ask this candidate to commit to 160 hours of basic training for two nights a week and a few Saturdays before even allowing them to to get a piece of the action? Don’t get me wrong — I’m 100% in favor of training, but let’s face the facts, too — you still learn your real lessons on the job, not from a Powerpoint presentation at the academy.
Sometimes I think the bureaucrats stay up at night thinking of ways to run us out of business, and the unionized/career side of the business is just sitting patiently on the sidelines waiting for us to throw in the towel.
Consider this: A member of the National Guard is allowed, by law, to take two weeks a year for training. The employer must let the Guard member go, but doesn’t have to pay the regular wage (but many do). In a similar instance, if volunteer firefighters were allowed two weeks to train full-time and could deduct two weeks of wages from their state and federal income tax at the end of the year, you would be basically “paying yourself” with Uncle Sam’s blessing. The town or fire district wouldn’t have to come up with any money and no 1099s to file. You wouldn’t have to burn up precious vacation time. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but I’m not an accountant, just a broken-down ex-chief.
Are we worth it? To our calling and to the people we protect? Even a politician should be able to figure this out.
July 8th, 2007 @ 5:45 am
Looking back 30 years ago when I joined our local rural Vol. Fire Dept., you could become a firefighter by taking a weekend fire school. You could become an ambulance attendant with approx. 24 hrs of Advanced First Aid or spend approx. 120 hrs and become an EMT. Rescue training was basic vehicle extrication which was part of the EMT class. Further specialized training was available to those who had the time and desire. Perspective members waited in line to join, sometimes a year or more. Most members remained active members until they either died or became to old to function as active members. We did many fundraisers as well as training throughout the year. We had pride in ourselves and pride in our dept. as our reward, unless you count the $2,000 death benefit. Our members joined to serve their community. We had mutual aid with neighboring depts. and received very little taxation. Life wasn’t easy but we all got by, put out the fires, rescued some folks and saved some lives along the way. We didn’t bill for ambulance services and grants and govt.,loans were almost nonexistant. Most members became cross trained in order to become qualified as firefighters, EMTs and rescue techs. Life was pretty good.
30 yrs later, we have newer equipment, much higher training standards and certifications, grants, loans, ambulance billing, higher fire taxes and the list goes on and on. Things are MUCH better today, right? I guess you could say so unless you consider the manpower part of the equation. Volunteerism has been declining steadily and recruitment and retention have become as important as water to put out the fires. Even with marketing our services, increased public and political relations, “growing our own” members via Jr. Fireman programs, “live in programs” for college students, we are still short on qualified personel to run calls. The days of being 3-way qualified in Fire/Rescue and EMS are almost history, unless you are a paid career member.
What has changed for the volunteers? We have added many state and federally mandated training courses and certifications in order to continue to do what we have been doing for many years. We have added Haz-Mat, Infection Control, IST, NIMS, Con-Ed and now Homeland Defense courses to the mix, some with recurring recertifications. Although I agree with as much training as we can give our volunteers to protect themselves and serve their community, I believe all the mandates have exceeded the capacity of our volunteers to keep up with. Are all the mandates for certifications and training in each discipline overwhelming the die hard volunteers? It would seem so. Where it would take a couple of years to crosstrain a volunteer to do ff/rescue and EMS 30 yrs ago, how many years would it take now to be certified in all 3 plus Haz-Mat and Homeland Defense?
Although I agree with modern training and certifications, I have to wonder if the “powers that be” realize that by trying to make volunteers as qualified as paid career people is working or not. With vol. fire companies going out of business and our number of volunteers declining nationwide, it appears that we are self destructing at a rapid pace. With fewer vol. services and a limited number of members to respond, what is the effect on the community and the citizens we serve? Is it better to have higher standards with either delayed or no response at all to emergencies?
Not all communities can afford to have paid fire/rescue and EMS services. Not all volunteer services can survive the higher standards imposed on them. The feds and the states can throw as much money as they want to seed new programs, but how do you get consistant results across the nation without mandating paid services in all communities?
In conclusion, I ask whether it is better to have a volunteer with basic knowledge to respond to a life threatening emergency or wait for the regional paid professionals to arrive? Common sense tells me that if I go into cardiac arrest, my next door neighbor with CPR training would be the real lifesaver.
One final thought. When disasters occur and an area is overwhelmed and paid emergency services are taxed to the max, we are certainly going to either thank God for volunteers, no matter what their certs. are or we are going to wish we still had a volunteer service to come to our aid. Did we learn anything from Katrina?
My comment to our politicians. How do you expect us to recruit our current generation of young people into volunteer emergency services without some incentive? You praise the volunteers with words but their service to our community is taken for granted. Volunteers perform their services on their “free time” and give up “sleep time” with no pay or benefits, unlike their paid counterparts. For years our volunteers lived on knowing that they did a good job. Now the govt. mandates and requires MORE from the volunteers with little to no incentive and we wonder why we are losing experienced members and not replacing them fast enough. I’m not a genius but how much would it cost a state or local govt. to show their appreciation to each volunteer member of a vol. dept. with some type of incentive such as a tax break, tuition or LOSAP program? Now, compare that small cost to the cost of paying for fulltime paid depts. across the state. Its a no brainer and it could be accomplished before the current problem becomes critical. Its a shame to hold the volunteers to the same high standards as paid personel and then expect them to respond and perform on their own personal time with no benefit at all.
I wonder if recruitment would be more effective if we offered some family health insurance to members who have none. How about some college tuition assistance? How about a retirement or LOSAP program? These small tokens of appreciation would let volunteers know they are appreciated instead of being taken for granted. The cost of tokens vs. funding fully paid depts in rural areas is certainly an idea for serious consideration.
July 8th, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
What portion of volunteer firefighters are immigrants? Is this a possible resource of people for rural fire departments? Could this be a type of civil service opportunity that might be part of the solution for the current illegal immigrant problems? If they volunteer for three to five years? Just a thought.
July 9th, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
What do we mean by volunteer? We have a volunteer military today. They do not hold pancake breakfasts to raise operating funds. National Guard members get paid and get a retirement. Is it time for the national fire/rescue service career and volunteer to be paid for their traing, work and service? If the fire/rescue service is our nation’s fire responder the nation needs to have a system to support them. It is time for a National Fire/Rescue Service Guard; with federal and state funding national standards for equipment, training, leadership, management, safety, and performance. In the year 2100 there will be a Fire/Rescue service. If they are still using pancake breakfasts as there source of revenue we did not do our job very will today.
July 9th, 2007 @ 11:22 pm
My comments may be a little different from the majority of people . I am in charge of a volunteer program in a combination department, which is majority volunteer. We suffered the same recruitment/retention problems as other departments nationwide. Our city named a new Chief from inside our department, who had worked his way up the ranks beginning as a volunteer alongside myself. We both wanted the volunteer portion of the department to be better. We approached the situation a little differently. We increased training and time requirements to volunteers. We also set benchmarks that needed to be met to stay an active member. Most people were very apprehensive about this and did not think they would be able to meet the new requirements. As time was logged we found most people exceeded these requirements. Call attendance has doubled and we have never had as well trained and well staffed membership as we do now. We always try to be seen in the community and we let people know about our department. Most people have no idea that we are a combination department, because the continuity of skill is the same or near same as the paid staff. We have had more success in recruitment when people see us training or see our department doing good things in the public. Sometimes people just want to be part of a winning team and feel challenged. What we have done will not work for everyone but it has worked for us.
July 10th, 2007 @ 12:56 am
I live in a small farm community west of Chicago. When I joined 18 years ago, the department was a “good ol’ boys club.” When you joined you got the pager, a “crash” course on SCBA, and you were ready to answer your first call. It was fun, and men wanted to join.
Now with call volumes increasing, members have jobs and commitments they just can’t be as active, even I get grief from the wife.
Volunteering is hard now a days, but you need to find a way to get people, to want to do it. No one likes training, we need to find a way to make it fun, but meaningful. Don’t stay around the station get out around the community, show them you’re learning and professional. Many communities around me, the public talks of their departments being clowns, I hear it about mine. Show them you’re not. We need more training classes and certifications course that work with volunteers, weekend class so it won’t interfer with jobs. This is probably the biggest complaint I hear: “How can I take a course when I have to work?”
More incentives will work. Retirement plans and reimbursement to the memebers, also. Let’s make it me attractive to future members that want to do the job and love the job.
We need to find a way to instill this again. The love of the job, it seems to be gone. Members want the pay check and no work. What happen to the days of washing the rigs because tit was dirty, cleaning tools after a job to make sure they were ready for the next one. Now it’s, “Sorry got other plans and can’t stick around.” That mentally has to stop. Let’s bring back that love of the job again, and hopefully recruitment and retainment will continue.
July 10th, 2007 @ 9:49 pm
I’ve read several comments and I too like many have spent several years as a volunteer. And just like others I got the initial required training(Basic Firefighter), but with time I progressed through the ranks through training every Tues. night @ 7pm until 10pm most nights. We had a long list of people wanting to join and then I got transferred to a new Vol. station where I assumed the duties of Lieutenant. I guess after that our Leadership set the example for the dept. we went out and purchased uniforms to start making the personnel look more professional then we started training and so many got certified in some many different things. Then more people started striving to take weekend classes at the academy. Some even went out of their ways to get certified as EMTs and a few officers went further to take classes to obtain their Fire Science Degree so they could some day be prepared to take over as a Battallion, Deputy, Assistant Chief some where whether in our state or some where else. I believe our marketing tool is our volunteers being able to talk to the public that comes around during those nights of training and tell them what they truly are missing and what opportunities are available because there are so many. I also agree that the govt. municipalities should some how assume part of the funding to help market our departments.
July 16th, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
It’s like one of my old departments. They carry a roster of apx 25 vols, my 2 sons are part of that, when their tones drop they are lucky just to get a driver and 2 men responding.
This is in a bedroom community of apx 1200 persons and most of the members live outside the district they cover which is only the city.
They have great mutual aid companies next to them but they are hard up as well. I belong to one of these.
We even have hard times getting people to respond just like everyone else. I have been involved in the service for over 40 years and I need to retire but who will take my place?
People will not miss the water until their well goes dry. A bunch of wells are drying up with the Vol Fire Service.
What can we do? I’m 2nd generation with 2 boys that are 3rd.
Tim
July 22nd, 2007 @ 11:12 pm
Its the same up here in British Columbia, Canada. More calls, more training, getting a bit much for volunteer/paid on-call firefighters to handle, as well as trying to raise a family.
I am pushing local politicians for 1 full-time position to handle all the day-to-day chores at the station so the firefighters can do what they joined to do (fight fires), not fix equiptment and clean the station.
December 13th, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
I am the fire chief in Blandford Nova Scotia and recently I have spoken publicly about this very issue. Asa 40 year old chief with 22 years of fire service experience I look at my 19 volunteers and wonder who will fill my shoes.
We protect a rural area along the south shore of Nova Scotia and the demographics have drastically changed over the past ten years. The average age of new members joining is 50 plus. We have become a retirement community with high land values which preclude young families from moving in. Those that do work commute an hour to their jobs. We are a small community of less than 1000 persons with less than 60 runs per year. Responses are mostly medical assists, mva, minor fires but have included major incidents including the first organization to respond to the SWISSAIR disaster in 1998. Since january we have not had crews available to respond to two alarms during the day. A fully involved structure fire in August received a three member response. As has been stated, thank goodness for mutual aid.
We are doing everything that we can think of to draw new members but with member turnover approaching 40 % last year maintaining even basic skill sets is a challenge for those of us left. Unfortunately we are not all of equal training so we lack instructors to pass on skills to new members.
I too refuse to give up the fight. I truly believe that the fire service needs to change like the rest of society. Dependance upon volunteers for basic emergency service is coming to and end. Full time day staffs to support the volunteer system is our future. The sustainment of the volunteer system requires time. In order to give enough time personnel will have to be compensated. This is the direction I believe is needed. These support staffers will also insure a minimum daytime response until mutual aid can arrive.
The world is not as small as we may sometimes think. A quick search of the net brought me here as I looked for ideas used elsewhere to deal with the issue of volunteerism in the fire service.
Stay safe.
Philip Publicover, Fire Chief
Blandford, NS, Canada