cuts in budgets and increased call volumes

GULF SHORES Ala.
September 22, 2024

By: Rick McCann

PART TWO OF THREE

Fire departments are not immune to manpower shortages, budget shortfalls, outdated equipment, or even permanent closures, especially when they are in rural areas, and serve their community strictly as volunteers.

Still today, almost seventy-two percent of all fire services nationwide operate completely as a volunteer service.

In almost all cases, even the chief and the command staff are unpaid but shoulder the same everyday responsibilities of managing a budget, staffing a firehouse, and making sure that all firefighter training is up to par with state and national standards and requirements, all while working a regular job elsewhere to support their families.

And now more than ever, fire departments, even those considered to be a career fire service are having a hard time recruiting and retaining firefighters.

Volunteer fire agencies nationwide continue to see a huge drop in members. One fire chief told a reporter in Ohio recently that people just don’t care about their communities like they used to.

In 2020, there were 676,900 volunteer firefighters in the US, down from 897,750 in 1984, and some in the fire service fear that those numbers will shrink even more over the next decade.

Some factors contributing to the decline include increased training requirements and less free time due to work and family responsibilities.

Those numbers reflected in the nationwide report is also reflective of the decrease of volunteers seen in Baldwin and Mobile Counties.

And, while staffing has been reduced, the number of emergency calls being responded to by volunteer fire departments has more than tripled since 1986, from less than 12 million to more than 36.6 million in 2021.

Local departments struggling

Locally, some volunteer fire departments are struggling to make the scene every time they get an emergency call.
One fire captain from a fast-growing rural area of Baldwin County who only has a volunteer fire department providing fire and emergency medical coverage, hesitated when asked if his department was able to keep up with the demands of their growing community. He stood there silently for a moment before shaking his head no.
Our call volume has gone from a few hundred calls a year to over a thousand or more now and we expect to see those numbers climb even more as several new subdivisions and a new shopping center are being built right now, he said.

Just recently, the Summerdale Fire Department joined several other local towns once served by an all-volunteer fire service to what’s called a “combination” department where both paid and volunteer firefighters staff the local fire stations.
And to address their growing city’s fire service needs, they are also building a new fire station.

In many cases, career firefighters, usually already working at other fire departments, staff a firehouse during the day shift while the volunteers are at their regular jobs.
Volunteers respond to emergencies during the evenings, overnights, and on weekends.
Other departments staff volunteers and paid staff together, around the clock.
This helps growing communities to provide fire services 24/7, something that their budget might not allow them to do otherwise.

Due to staffing, numerous area fire departments do not respond to medical emergencies such as an illness, minor injury, or non-emergent call, unless requested by the ambulance service.

However, calls of an unconscious person, heart attack, drug overdoses, and vehicle accidents with injuries are considered to be high- priority calls and local fire departments continue to respond immediately to these when staffing allows for it.

Besides the lack of concern that some people may have for their community, another factor in the low recruitment of new volunteer members is the substantial amount of training now required.

Unlike when volunteers served in the 60’s and 70’s, when training requirements were more laxed, and less demanding, today most states require that all volunteer firefighters meet similar, if not the exact, training requirements of a career firefighter.

In Alabama, volunteers must complete at least the Volunteer Firefighter Course.
To become a certified volunteer firefighter, a candidate must complete 160 hours of training within a 24-months. The training must be conducted by a certified instructor at a commission-approved facility.
Some members of volunteer departments take it a step further by taking the Firefighter 1 and Firefighter 2 training courses, a minimum of 400 hours of training. This training includes a combination of classroom study, drill field practice, and training evolutions.
And that doesn’t include the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) training consisting of several hundred more hours of training or a paramedic certification that could take up to two years to complete.

Getting creative

Mobile County is experiencing growing pains and firefighter shortages as well.
Areas including Seven Hills, Georgetown, and Theodore continue to see their call volumes increasing while staffing concerns loom.
In 2020, a special election was held for the residents who were served by the Theodore/Dawes Volunteer Fire Department and they voted to form a fire district which brought the additional funding that was desperately needed.
In 2018 Mobile Fire-Rescue scaled back their coverage area, putting a larger burden on the Theodore/Dawes Volunteer Fire Department. They went from taking 35 calls a month to more than 350.
The one time all volunteer department is now structured as a combination fire service made up of mostly volunteers but also now has some paid-career fighters on staff.
The fire department covers a 38 square mile community resulting in close to 5,000 calls for service a year.

Some states have had to get creative in providing fire and emergency medical services and have formed county fire department systems combining resources, manpower, and budgets. One agency, covering all the citizens in many towns and cities within the county.
Some of these departments in states like Maryland and Virginia are some of the largest in the country.

And private fire departments have also been a way for some areas to provide fire services.
Rural Metro Fire for instance operates in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Oregon, Tennessee, and Wisconsin providing both emergency medical services and fire protection.
Rural Metro Fire was conceived by a 22-year-old journalist, Lou Witzeman, working for the Arizona Times. The seed was planted when he watched his neighbors’ home rendered to ash by a fire one night and the fire department never responded. For insurance reasons, city fire departments could not leave the city and, you guessed it, the home was outside the city limits.
The department has been going strong since the company began in 1959.

Locally, Pro-Tec Fire Services, Ltd., a private fire protection service partnered with the Mobile Airport Authority providing Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighting (ARFF) services to the Mobile Regional Airport and Mobile Downtown Airport with services starting on April 1, 2020, and continues that service today.

Fire departments shut down

And, while you might think that fire departments are an essential service provided by your local government, the fact is, fire departments nationwide have been closing, turning in their firefighter gear, and shutting their doors for the last time.
Often it’s because of a lack of money to support the fire department but there are also been political conflicts internally or between the fire department and local government officials, sometimes it’s because embezzlement has bankrupted the small fire service and sometimes it’s because a neighboring city has annexed into the area and taken over the fire protection service.

Recently, fire departments in Tennessee, New York, Michigan, and North Carolina have closed completely, victims of either funding issues or a lack of volunteers to staff the department.
The North Amityville Fire Company on Long Island was shut down in 2022 after allegations of internal theft and long response times including some calls that took over an hour to respond to.
Earlier this year, a volunteer fire department in rapidly growing Rutherford County Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville, also closed down after serving their community for forty-nine years.
The Lascassas Volunteer Fire Department responded to their last call, said their final goodbyes, and locked the fire station door as the era of volunteer fire service came to an end for that community.
Rutherford County voted to form a Countywide Fire Service, phasing out volunteers and replacing them with paid-career firefighters.

Even career fire stations have been shut down in recent years due to manpower shortages and budget cuts.
In Merced County California, the Merced County Board of Supervisors took a series of actions that cut the number of full-time Cal Fire stations from 19 down to 15.
In September 2022, the South Placer Fire District closed two stations.
Six fire stations have closed in the city of Milwaukee in recent years due to financial constraints and budgets for the fire service have also been shrinking for years including raises for the firefighters who protect the community.

Solutions are needed now
There are 37 fire departments in Baldwin County and of those only Bay Minette, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Daphne, Foley, Summerdale, and Spanish Fort operate either as a paid or combination fire agency.

While response times to fire and medical calls in Baldwin County are generally within an acceptable range, some calls do get passed on to several mutual-aid departments before one has available volunteers to respond to that call.
This happens when the original department is unable to respond because there are no volunteers available or they are already out on an emergency call and have no extra personnel to respond to the additional dispatched call.
This process of transferring an emergency call from one department to another can take anywhere from three minutes to upwards of ten minutes or more.
Additionally, volunteer-only fire departments locally do not always have members sitting around the fire station waiting for a call and often firefighters have to travel from their home to the fire station or sometimes they may drive directly to the scene.
On most days, this system works but not every day, and not when there are multiple incidents demanding priority responses and the clock is ticking.

Nationally, in higher volume volunteer fire stations, “duty” hours are assigned to the volunteers who must commit to manning their stations 8, 10, or 12 hours at a time to ensure that there are firefighters available to respond immediately to every emergency call.

With Baldwin County’s exploding growth, a population nearing 250,000 that can often swell to over 500,000 on any given day during the summer, and being the largest county in Alabama by area, emergency services are already behind the eightball.

Medical emergency calls, vehicle accidents, mental health and suicide emergencies, alarm activations, and public assistance calls account for most of all dispatches in the county and nationwide.
Fire calls have been reduced through education, the use of smoke alarms and sprinkler systems, and in some cases, better building materials but that doesn’t mean that we need fewer firefighters. It’s just the opposite since many fire departments are primary responders sent to every medical call, every motor vehicle accident that might have someone injured, and dozens of other types of calls that could present a danger.

Should Baldwin County consider forming a single countywide fire agency combining volunteers and career fighters, pooling equipment and budgets, and having just one standard method of training and one set of processes instead of dozens of ways of conducting business across the county?

Should county leaders consider hiring a private fire service to fill the voids of staffing and ensure the immediate response to every call no matter the time or the day?

While the cities that have a career fire department in place will no doubt keep growing as their communities grow, the rural departments that used to respond to just a few calls a week or a few hundred calls a year, are beginning to struggle with the sudden demand for their services and the expectations that they’ll be there when they’re needed regardless of the time of day or night.

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