Fire departments were responding to a large fire in an old apartment complex in the town of Stepford. June Palmer had cautiously passed the fire scene on her way home. After passing the scene, she accelerated; her car struck something and her airbags deployed. Palmer’s car had hit a fire truck, seriously injuring a firefighter.

The fire truck was parked down the road while drafting water for a shuttle relay. It partially extended onto the road, but had no traffic cones and or flares surrounding it.

This scenario was the basis for a mock trial last week at the 22nd Annual Fire Department Safety Officers Association’s Apparatus Symposium in Orlando. Real-life attorneys Jim Juneau and Philip C. Stittleburg, and New York State Supreme Court Judge Robert McGann showed how the trial would proceed in an actual courtroom. Symposium attendees played the roles of the injured firefighter, Stepford’s safety officer and chief, Palmer, and the engineer from the apparatus manufacturer.

“If the jury determines that it was foreseeable, you should have foreseen the outcome,” McGann said. “You are going to be responsible.”

While the injured firefighter had settled with the Palmer’s insurance company, the manufacturer was being sued for not delivering Stepford’s new fire truck with NFPA 1901–required striping and emergency safety cones and flares.

“NFPA 1901 allows a fire truck to be delivered as long as the truck is not used until the required equipment and other required work is completed before it is put in to service,” McGann explained.

During the mock trial, witnesses testified that the apparatus manufacturer delivered the new fire truck to the fire department; however, the department opted to do the stripping and outfit the equipment through their own suppliers. The manufacturer had the fire chief sign a statement of exception, agreeing that the fire department would install the NFPA 1901–required equipment and striping on the truck before it was placed into emergency service.

Since the fire chief signed the statement of exception, the city of Stepford was obligated to complete the required stripping and installation of safety equipment on the truck. “The absence of the safety cones and safety flares left the truck vulnerable to the accident,” McGann said.

Witnesses also testified that budget restrictions prevented the chief from authorizing the required stripping and equipment, yet city council members pressed to get the new fire truck in service. With a large building fire, the chief reasoned that using the truck to draft water for a tanker shuttle away from the fire scene didn’t constitute participating in “emergency service.”

The safety officer’s notes from a safety committee meeting were introduced into evidence. The manufacturer insisted that the statement of exception was signed by the chief. The chief denied and then remembered being present at the safety meeting and discussing the required equipment.

The safety officer voluntarily produced his notes during the discover phase. “Never write anything that you wouldn’t anticipate is going to be part of the litigation process,” McGann said. “If there is a shred of paper, a conversation, a recording, an e-mail, Jim Juneau is going to have a case.”

Trials aren’t just about the evidence. They also are about impressions. An audience member asked whether a Class A uniform should be worn into the courtroom. “It depends on the people’s perception of government,” McGann answered. “I always like to have officers in uniform in court. In the last couple of years, however, we have seen an erosion of confidence in government, so it would depend on how government is being regarding in that locale; if people have lost confidence in government, then no Class A.”

Juneau, too, prefers a uniform “with lots of gold” if the chief is a good witness with a humble persona. However, if the personality of the officer appears pompous, Juneau recommends toning it down with a uniform shirt and badge.

“The trial is the search for the truth,” said Judge McGann. “When you walk in a courtroom, you don’t want to be the smartest person in the group, do you? You don’t want to be the person that the jury can’t relate to.”

Last week, Arizona residents saw some of the worst flooding in years. Out of 15 counties in the state, 10 were declared emergencies. Lives were lost, including that of a 6-year-old Phoenix boy who drowned in swiftwater. At the same time, just this month the state’s fire marshal office was forced to shut its door as a result of budget cuts.

Specifically, Arizona’s Office of State Fire Marshal released a memo based on Gov. Jan Brewer’s mandate that every city department cut 15% from its budget and eliminate programs not mandated by statue, said Arizona Fire Chief Association’s Executive Director Ron Dennis. He said as an example, the fire marshal’s office is required by statute to inspect schools but is not mandated to oversee firefighter training. As a result, statewide certification programs were suspended, including Firefighter I and II certification and instructor and fire inspector training.

Having fewer firefighters trained is a concern of Dennis, and the AFCA is setting up task forces to determine how training programs will continue going forward.

But his immediate concern is that the fire marshal office also fired the fire resource coordinator and announced it would no longer centrally track and coordinate statewide mutual-aid resources. Dennis said the statewide mutual-aid program has a memorandum of understanding with the AFCA that the office will support the resource tracking in the state and staff the emergency operations center if there is a major emergency. The loss of the coordinator left fire chiefs without access to a resource database and without an ability to update it or use it for statewide deployment. In addition, the database wasn’t 100% complete and is now “dead in the water,” he said.

“We don’t have access to the database and we don’t have anyone to get that database up to speed like we need it to be,” Dennis said.

The bottleneck will cripple state- and countywide mutual-aid operations, Dennis said. That doesn’t apply to the current storm the state faces, because a state emergency was declared so resources are coordinated by FEMA through a number of city and county emergency operating centers.

“The good news as that each county has a resource coordinator, and we will be relying on them through direct contact to assist us,” Dennis said.

The next step Dennis said is for AFCA members to draft a transition plan to deal with the cutbacks, but it is going to take a few months to complete. It will be spearheaded by a mutual-aid task force, which will determine who gets called to staff the EOC during statewide emergencies. In addition, the database must somehow be transferred to the division of emergency management and updates completed.

“We have a plan but right now we have lots of hurdles to jump to get our mutual-aid program back on track,” he said. “The big thing is that if there is a disaster, who gets called to the EOC and so we have to figure out who is available and who is qualified.”

In the meantime, staffing the fire side is a problem. So Dennis currently is at the Arizona state emergency operations center to help coordinate the AFCA’s role for the current state-wide emergency.

“Right in the middle of this, I ended up going to the emergency operations center and working as the fire resources coordinator with no resource database,” Dennis said, noting that he couldn’t provide fire resource data to federal officials when they asked for it.

For Dennis and the state of Arizona, federal resources saved their skin during the current storm. But if statewide fire resources were really needed, “We would have been in big, big trouble,” Dennis said.

Related link:

• ACFA’s position statement

Where would you go for an objective assessment of your fleet services — apparatus, equipment and procedures? Most fire chiefs would turn to another chief for the name of an independent, experienced individual who could perform such an in-depth evaluation.

At the Fire Department Safety Officers Association’s Apparatus Symposium last week, Paul Lauria, president of Mercury Associates spoke about the role of a fleet services consultant and what to expect from a consultant. Lauria was hired by the city of Boston to evaluate its fleet-services division after the January 2009 crash that killed Lt. Kevin Kelley.

Lauria explained fleet-management consultants are hired for a variety of reasons. “In good economic times, we do a lot of general fleet-management best-practices studies,” Lauria said. “[We also conduct] fleet cost-analysis studies — and it’s no surprise we’re doing a lot of those during a down economy — as well as fleet downsizing studies.”

Lauria said that departments need a better understanding of fleet management goals — quality versus efficiency — and total costs of ownership. He also stressed of the importance of collaborations between fleet managers and fleet users.

“You can’t have an effective fleet-management program without the end users,” Lauria said. “Fleet management is a shared responsibility.”

Too often, those on the financial side of a department don’t understand the complexities of fleet management, frequently comparing preventive maintenance to their personal vehicles. Even changing replacement cycles to reduce the total cost of a fleet can be difficult to understand.

Many fleet managers began as mechanics and moved up the ladder to fleet management, which is frequently not looked on as a profession. Fleet management involves two distinct management activities — asset management and enterprise management. Non-technicians think about things that affect the assets, such as maintenance repair, acquisition and disposal. But there are enterprise activities that involve the care and feeding of the assets — budget, accounting, risk management, asset management, human resources, information technology — and these can have a profound impact on fleet operations.

“One of the underlying causes of the problems in Boston had to do with human-resources management — tension between the union and the mayor’s administration — and nothing to do with the assets themselves,” Lauria said.

Fleet-management professionals who think only about assets and cannot articulate to management why they need funding to replace apparatus will not be successful, Lauria said. Fleet management is about providing tools to organizations that enable them to do their jobs.

When he first meets with the chief of a department, Lauria asks:

• Is there a designated fleet manager? If not, who organizes the fleet?
  
• Where did they acquire their fleet-management expertise, such as it is? What else do they manage, if anything?
  
• Do you have a fleet capital operating budget? How much do you spend a year on your fleet?
  
• Do you have documented fleet policies and procedures?
  

Lauria said that he also reviews vehicle assignments for the most cost-effective way to meet the needs. Defining the needs of the vehicles are critical before developing vehicle specifications.

Are you ready for a fleet-management consultant to visit your shop?

There is little doubt that the potential benefits of a nationwide 700 MHz broadband network are enormous — the ability to transmit medical data, to run complex criminal database queries and to download blueprints of a burning building are just a few of the examples noted by public-safety officials.

Of course, there are even more examples of technology’s reality not matching its hype, particularly in early deployments, when inevitable bugs and glitches tend to be most prominent. In the commercial world, such disappointment typically leads to buyer’s remorse. In a public-safety setting, a communications failure can lead to the gravest of consequences.

With this in mind, the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program recently announced plans to create a demonstration 700 MHz broadband network devoted to determining what fourth-generation broadband wireless technology can — and can’t — do for public safety, as regulators and Congress decide policy issues surrounding the frequency band.

“That’s stuff that has never been deployed before, so we probably need to figure out how it’s going to work and if it’s going to work as expected,” PSCR program manager Dereck Orr said. “And, public safety needs to come in and get their hands on it and maybe run some public-safety-specific scenarios over the demo network … [to] see how it operates, so they have a well-founded expectation of what they’re going to get.”

PSCR officials this week are beginning to reach out to potentially interested parties — public-safety officials, commercial service providers and broadband wireless vendors — to determine what aspects should be tested over the demonstration network, which will include a laboratory component and an over-the-air component, Orr said.

Orr added that he believes that priority and pre-emption will be high on the list of aspects to be tested, as will the real-world operations of many public-safety applications. He said that the PSCR wants the demonstration network to be used to test “public-safety-specific issues,” and not generic broadband operational items that commercial vendors are testing on their own.

“We want to provide environment for the manufacturers and service providers to work out issues among themselves and with their equipment in a very open, non-competitive environment, but focused specifically on the public-safety requirements,” Orr said.

The PSCR is hopeful that the demonstration network can be deployed late this summer or early in the fall — a timeline that largely depends on the availability of gear for new 4G standards such as LTE, Orr said. In addition, while the initial demonstration network will be deployed in a rural area outside of Boulder, Colo., the PSCR also plans to pursue opportunities to establish a similar demonstration network in an urban area, he said.

News of such testing should be welcomed by both the public-safety and commercial communities. For the former, the demonstration network should be a valuable test bed that will help public-safety entities discern where the 4G hype ends and where reality begins, as well as give them a chance to become more comfortable with broadband technology without risking local taxpayers’ money.

For commercial manufactures and service providers, having a demonstration network and an open process may allow them to address and integrate public-safety requirements into 4G networks during the early stages of deployments, instead of as an afterthought that may be too expensive for carriers to consider when deployments are nearing completion.

It’s ironic that state governments are cutting fire department budgets, especially in the eye of current national security threats, when the role of fire departments in such threats continues to grow. This was seen a month ago when Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was threatened by a Yemeni terrorist who was determined to blow up the commercial jetliner. He failed, the plane landed safely at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and the whole story seemed to be swept under the table.

What many might not know is that the FBI lacked tools it needed to test the chemicals used by the bomber. Instead, the FBI called around until they reached a battalion chief at the Warren (Mich.) Fire Department via a 911 dispatcher. The agency asked if Warren had a handheld chemical detector that could identify the toxic materials found on the scene, said David Vinson, the department’s hazmat operations chief. Vinson was surprised he got the call because although Warren is the third-largest city in Michigan, it is about 30 miles from the airport.

“I guess they were trying to get a hold of departments closer to the airport but were unable to contact anyone,” Vinson said. “It was Christmas Day.”

Vinson asked Lt. David Frederick to calibrate the department’s Ahura Scientific detector, ensure it was powered up and get it in working order. Frederick then packed up and headed to the airport, where FBI agents had the plane detained in a hanger.

It took Frederick a little less than an hour to reach the hanger. There he met with an FBI explosives expert and forensic scientist. Frederick said the FBI sounded pretty sure they knew what chemicals were present but wanted a secondary confirmation. He handed over the detector, and the FBI scientist tested the chemicals.

“It took about 15 to 20 seconds, and the FBI came back with a positive reading of exactly what they thought it was,” he said.

Frederick said the event proves fire departments must do more and be prepared for the unexpected. A decade ago, no one knew what a terrorist was and that a war would be fought on all fronts, both at home and abroad, he said. Times are different now.

“There’s no doubt that since 9/11 our role as firefighters has changed a lot,” Frederick said.

Vinson said it was 9/11 that led to the procurement of chemical detectors and other hazmat equipment, specifically during the 2003–2005 fiscal years and paid for by post-9/11 federal grant funds. He said chiefs should consider purchasing the devices because emergency incidents do occur — like Flight 253 — where they are needed. But they are not cheap.

“Outside grant funding, we wouldn’t have it,” Vinson said. “It runs about $30,000.”

Were your ears burning this week? If they were, you might be among the fire chiefs who don’t take responsibility for apparatus safety — we were talking about you this week at the 22nd Annual FDSOA Apparatus Symposium.

The event included my favorite straight-talking attorney, Jim Juneau, who spoke about “Learning from our Mistakes.”

“Every year in the U.S., there are 15,000 fire-apparatus accidents,” he said. “They range from open apparatus doors knocked off to incidents that result in 5,500 lost-time firefighter injuries for a cost of $7 to $8 billion.”

Juneau applauded the fact that the 93 line-of-duty deaths in 2009 was the lowest number in 10 years, but pointed out that 16 of those LODDs resulted from vehicle collisions — and excessive speed, improper seatbelt use and intoxication often were contributing factors. In fact, Juneau said that there has been an increase in intoxicated apparatus drivers.

“You have a responsibility to stop someone who has been drinking from getting behind the wheel of an emergency vehicle,” Juneau said.

While the ratio of LODDs compared to the total number of firefighters is small, many of the firefighter deaths — especially related to apparatus — are preventable.

“Do you have a full-stop policy in your department?” Juneau asked the attendees. “Last year was a bad year for intersection accidents. Intersection policies should state a full stop must become the accepted SOP in the professional fire service. I’m including volunteers — I mean a professional attitude.”

Juneau also shared lessons on:

Older apparatus: “If you’re driving a 1964 engine, take the lights off that vehicle because you’re driving a piece of junk, not a fire truck.”

Training on new equipment: “Get familiar with new equipment in a safe environment,” he said, referencing a fatal accident that occurred during training on a new mid-mount platform.

Power lines: “Treat all [power] lines as hot — even when they are reported as de-energized.” He encouraged that departments purchase an AC current detector and keep it in the baskets of platform units.

Seatbelts: “Enforce the seatbelt policy. Send [firefighters] home if they won’t wear their seatbelts and tell them that in your department they will wear seatbelts.”

In another program, expert witness Ralph Craven and Bureau Chief Brian Brown talked about apparatus problems in Boston Fire Department. Craven was called in three days after Boston Fire Department’s Ladder 26 lost its brakes and crashed through a tree, killing 30-year veteran Lt. Kevin Kelley.

Craven was asked to examine the wreckage of Ladder 26 alongside the police forensic team. “It took me 14 hours to take the right side wheel assembly apart,” Craven said, adding that there were no brakes in the left rear wheel.

Craven stressed that many of the problems with Boston’s fleet were from a lack of a preventive maintenance program. “Many of the problems we saw would have been discovered if the department had a P.M. program,” Craven said. “Fire chiefs must insist that not only a P.M. program is instituted, but that daily checks are done on each and every shift.”

According to a recently released district attorney’s report, several of the problems revolved around the Ladder 26’s brakes, including issues because an outside vendor uses the wrong parts on the brake system.

“If your fire department uses an outside vendor, make sure they are in compliance with Title 49, Part 396, which refers to training of individuals certified to work on air brake systems,” Craven said. “NFPA 1911 is the standard by which you will be judged and includes the out-of-service criteria.”

Stay tuned next week for discussion about the trial of manufacturer who delivered a fire truck and the fire chief who signed a statement of exception.

At the 2008 Station Style Conference in Phoenix, a deputy chief and a researcher presented on contamination in the interior of fire station. I overheard one chief say that he didn’t come to a station-design conference “to hear about bugs and bacteria.”

Most may not have come to hear about such bugs, but most attendees were shocked to learn how long MRSA and other bacteria can live on unexpected surfaces — particularly on the chairs and couches. One chief subsequently decided against carpeting the living area as a precaution.

MRSA may have provoked the discussion, but H1N1, bloodborne pathogens and other contaminants have highlighted the need for changes in turnout-laundering and equipment-cleaning procedures.

On a recent visit to Alexandria (Va.) Fire Department’s new Station at Potomac Yard, I saw a room off from the apparatus bays specifically for cleaning turnout gear. I also found a set of standard washers and dryers that, according to Bttn. Chief John North, are to be used to launder all stationwear. Firefighters no longer area allowed to take their stationwear home to wash.

At a recent apparatus symposium, Chief Mark Ober, Anderson Township (Ohio) Fire and Rescue Department, said his department is looking at new methods of decontaminating apparatus. He described a third-party, free-standing garage-type facility into which vehicles can pulled for decontamination.

And it’s more than dirty gear that you need to worry about. Ober said that a neighboring town no longer allows medic bags to be placed on the floors of patients’ homes because medics were bringing bedbugs back to the station.

Most departments already have standard operating procedures for decontaminating gear, equipment and apparatus. But do you have policies that cover cleaning your station’s day room, kitchen and eating areas, as well as bedding and showers? If not, now is the time to create them.

The 2010 Station Style Conference again will offer a program on infection control and durable surfaces. Danger lurks not only on calls, but back in the shelter of the station as well.

As I walked around Naperville (Ill.) Fire Department’s Station No. 10, Deputy Chief Mike Zywanski pointed out that the drill rig behind the station was inserting sleeves for the pipes that would provide cost-saving geothermal heating and cooling inside the new station.

Zywanski pointed to the opaque-looking windows high above the apparatus bay, which allow natural light into the facility while limiting exposure to the neighboring residential area.

Lighting can have another effect inside a fire station according to Zywanski. Prior to this new station, Naperville Fire Department always had racks on the bay walls for the firefighters’ turnout gear. According to NFPA 1851, ultraviolet rays from the sun and incandescent light — which give off UV — deteriorates the fabric of turnout gear.

“One of the things that I saw as a judge with Station Style Design Awards was to have a separate gear room,” Zywanski said. “I fought pretty hard for that with our city administration, but ultimately, the turnout gear will last longer in a room without windows.”

He pointed out other new features of the green station, one of which is that it is more energy efficient than Station No. 9, which was built in 2006. “For the taxpayers’ benefit, the energy efficiency of this station is 35% better than any other fire station this size,” Zywanski said.

Speaking of Station No. 9, Zywanski said that everything that could go wrong in a building did. He said Station No. 10 was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Station No. 9.

“Looking back, many of the problems associated with Fire Station No. 9 could have been avoided if we had done some things differently in the planning process, the design process, construction-delivery process and in communications with the construction team,” he said.

Zywanski will present his lessons learned in “Construction Manager-at-Risk Delivery Method,” at our 2010 Station Style Conference to be held April 11–13, in Overland Park, Kan.

The complete program will be posted on the Web site this week and include cover everything from concept and design to construction and finance to security and LEED. The ever-popular pre-conference programs include the one-on-one with experienced, objective architects, as well as an experts’ panel. New programs include “The Lifecycle of Strategic Planning Processes,” “Understanding ADA,” and “Building Security into your Station.” The solid, basic programs include operations-based design, building training into your station and site location for response time.

And then there are the unique lessons learned from the Alexandria (Va.) Fire Department’s new Potomac Yard fire station. Paul Erickson, of the architecture firm LeMay Erickson Willcox, will explain the challenge of using public/private financing for a fire station that also houses 62 apartments above, a multi-level parking garage below and a retail shop in the front.

As Zywanski will attest, designing smarter can save you money.

By Phil Stittleburg

Forecasting the future of the volunteer fire and emergency services is no easy task, nor is it an exact science, but there are several trends and challenges within the volunteer sector now that indicate what the future may hold. Primarily, I believe we’ll see a continued emergence of combination departments, new and innovative solutions to the challenges of retention and recruitment, increased focus on health and safety, and increasing needs for funding. Each issue brings its own set of challenges and opportunities for a service that is ever-evolving and fulfilling an ever expanding role.

Over the past decade, a number of historically all-volunteer fire departments have been hiring career personnel to supplement their ability to deliver in a timely fashion a sufficient number of adequately trained personnel to the scene of an emergency, particularly during weekdays when many volunteer firefighters are at work.

According to the NFPA’s U.S. Fire Department Profile, which covered 2005 through 2007, the number of mostly volunteer/combination fire departments increased by nearly 22%, from 4,092 to 4,989. The 2008 profile reveals a slight decrease in the number of mostly volunteer/combination departments to 4,830, which is likely explained by some of these departments moving to mostly-career status — the number of mostly-career and all-career departments both increased slightly between 2007 and 2008 — and a weak economy that made it difficult for more volunteer departments to hire career staff. I envision this trend continuing. Department leadership must recognize the warning signs signaling a need for change and know how to meet the challenges — and welcome the opportunities — of moving from a volunteer to a combination department when warranted.

Traditionally, the shift from volunteer to combination departments has been fueled by population growth in a jurisdiction, but we are seeing an increasing number of volunteer departments that are struggling to recruit and retain new volunteer personnel because of the demands of modern training standards and the significant time commitments that they impose, particularly on new recruits.

For the first time ever, the 2008 U.S. Fire Department Profile, published this year, revealed that a majority of firefighters serving in communities of 2,500 or less are over the age of 40. This encompasses more than 400,000 firefighters in all and approximately 45% of the total number of volunteer firefighters in the country. To put that in perspective, in 1987 approximately 65% of firefighters serving those communities were under the age of 40. As we look to the future, this trend is sure to continue unless innovative methods are employed to recruit and retain younger volunteers. The NVFC has developed retention and recruitment tools to address these issues, and has launched the National Junior Firefighter Program to attract youth to our services. The NVFC’s Fire Corps program also has proved to be a great recruitment mechanism for departments across the country.

Fire-service leadership must actively promote a healthy and safe environment for our department members and lead by example. Unfortunately, we often forget that our health affects the lives of so many others who are depending on us to be there in times of need. Taking the time to implement a health and wellness program or making simple lifestyle changes — like healthy eating at the station, exercising as a group, quitting smoking and preventative health screenings — can lead to healthy and safe first responders. A healthy and safe fire and emergency service impacts the amount of firefighters we retain, our ability to recruit, how we train and the number of calls to which we respond. The benefits of a healthy and safe department have far-reaching implications for our firefighters, our department and our community.

In these difficult economic times, funding will continue to be a challenge for our emergency services. National-level funding through the Assistance to Firefighters Grant program will continue to play an integral role in meeting basic needs for our departments. On the local level, departments will continue to feel the effects of budget cuts. Our personnel are pressed for time as it is; fund-raisers such as pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners simply are not the answer to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for much-needed emergency-response equipment.

I look forward to what the future holds and know that the National Volunteer Fire Council and the nearly one million volunteer firefighters we represent will meet these challenges and opportunities with a positive and proactive response, and most of all, with a shared passion for what we do.

FIRE CHIEF asked 11 leading experts to predict how the next decade will unfold for American fire and emergency services. Read the rest of their responses in the January issue.

Rumors have been circulating that the recently released National Fire Protection Association report entitled “U.S. Fire Department Profile Through 2008” shows a dangerous trend of older firefighters protecting U.S. communities. But according to the NFPA, the rumors are unsubstantiated and have resulted in confusion within the fire service.

I first heard about the report via an e-newsletter from the National Volunteer Fire Council. The NVFC reported that the analysis showed that firefighters 40 years of age or older increasingly are the ones protecting our communities. The council then claimed the report proves there is a dangerous trend of older firefighters serving, with fewer younger recruits entering the service to replace them.

The NVFC’s statements really irked John Hall Jr., the division director for the NFPA’s fire analysis and research team. Hall said it’s true that the report showed that the two largest groups of U.S. fire service personnel — which total roughly 1.15 million — consisted of older members: 300,500 firefighters were 30 to 39 years old, while another 272,600 firefighters were 40 to 49.

However, Hall said the NVFC shouldn’t have implied publicly that the report proves an aging force will lead to a dangerous situation. Instead, the report only offered age data, he said, adding that any other characterization would require an evaluation of the capabilities of firefighters at different ages, and that such an evaluation is not reflected in the data — nor is it obvious.

“At no point did we describe the situation as dangerous,” he said. “And the aging of the firefighters in [the fire service] is not the only possible explanation for a shift in the age distribution.”

So I called NVFC Chairman Philip Stittleburg for clarification on the council’s position. He said that because the NFPA compiled the statistics, it is in the best position to interpret the data. But he warned that if the majority of firefighters are over 40 and the trend continues, the fire service at some point will have staff that are a “little too old for the job, with not enough young firefighters coming in,” he said.

“[The report] does seem to show an aging firefighting force and that is still a potential problem we all need to deal with,” Stittleburg said. “In addition, it’s awfully important to keep an age-balance in the fire service — you need the benefit of the more-experienced firefighters and the young ones coming in, because they are the future of the fire service. So if you see that the age balance is tipping in any direction, much younger or much older, then that signals some challenges for us.”

I understand the NVFC’s position. Many in the volunteer fire service claim it’s harder to recruit members, especially in this economy. But the NFPA report is just what Hall says it is: a compilation of numbers, not an analysis on recruitment challenges.

However, the debate does make me wonder what’s happening out in the real world — not inside a statistician’s office. In fact, I’d be interested in hearing from fire chiefs about their own recruitment challenges and whether they think the NVFC is correct in its conclusions. Data may tell one story, but people in the field can always tell another, often more telling, story.



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