Volunteer Firefighter Incentives - Interesting story on possible WY Legislation

[Ben Lamb]

Cat Urbigkit: Firefighters Wanted In Wyoming

Columnist Cat Urbigkit writes, "Of 55 Wyoming fire departments responding to the recent survey, most reported experiencing challenges with recruiting new firefighters. All told, the responding fire departments reported the need for nearly 500 additional firefighters statewide to fill their rosters."

cowboystatedaily.com

I thought it was interesting to see what WY legislators are looking at in terms of trying to incentivize more volunteer firefighters. Free/reduced cost licenses and a special week for Volunteer Firefighters on the table.

I know we have some volunteers on the board, curious as to their thoughts on this. To my mind, most of these suggestions aren't going to be much of an incentive - burn your personal time off to fight fires, etc. Seems like small ball solutions to big-ball problems.

 

[MtnElk]

This is a fascinating issue out west, and we deal with it here. We live in the number one fire risk district in the state and I think the 8th riskiest in the country. My father in law is a career fire fighter back in the Midwest and I told him I was thinking of volunteering here. Before I did, he said he wanted to look over everything before I signed up, as any local fire here is more likely to be approached like a wildfire and not necessarily like structural.

I sent him the link with all the info and he was kind of appalled by the high amount of risk, low reward tradeoff. He (and I) also thought it was fascinating how much paperwork and background info we had to personally bring as part of our application, rather than having it be pulled centrally by the district (think of showing up a the bank with everything you'd need for a mortgage and them just saying yes or no, but add in DMV, etc).

I don't think volunteers need to be overly compensated, but lower the barriers of entry and incentivize it in some way. Ultimately he told me I should pass, which basically killed any chance I had of talking the wife into approving it. But there is talk of consolidating some of the fire districts here in the mountains, which may lead to some changes on the volunteer side.

 

[Valley1320]

Idk what all my thoughts are... our dept here we are volunteers but we require just as much training as state forestry does for theirs. Definitely stuff that takes time. NM has started doing incentives as well but even those unless you can get your county on board and willing to do the financial side of it, it won't happen. Our county financial agent is a joke and won't don't anything extra for our dept. I don't have a problem of giving of my time but during fire season definitely takes a ton of time.

 

[Valley1320]

I don't think volunteers need to be overly compensated, but lower the barriers of entry and incentivize it in some way.

Talking of lowering barriers of entry here I would never consider doing that. But our joining requirements don't sound as bad as what you were looking into. But if we lowered ours here we have guys that we wouldn't want joining. There's a reason so many volunteer depts get a bad name and guys don't train and do things a professional way. Which I think is another reason there hasn't been more incentives because of how so many volunteer are. Makes me wonder if all volunteer depts had a professional standard of training and requirements, if their would be more incentives already. But then would also be less volunteers cuz so many guys just want a coffee drinker fire dept.

 

[MtnElk]

Talking of lowering barriers of entry here I would never consider doing that. But our joining requirements don't sound as bad as what you were looking into. But if we lowered ours here we have guys that we wouldn't want joining. There's a reason so many volunteer depts get a bad name and guys don't train and do things a professional way. Which I think is another reason there hasn't been more incentives because of how so many volunteer are. Makes me wonder if all volunteer depts had a professional standard of training and requirements, if their would be more incentives already. But then would also be less volunteers cuz so many guys just want a coffee drinker fire dept.

yeah I agree with you; should have used better wording when I crafted my initial response. I am all for lowering the barrier of entry, but not by lowering the minimal effective standards for a volunteer to meet.

 

[Nameless Range]

I’ve been a volunteer for the better part of a decade - at times just a firefighter, an Assistant Chief, a trustee, and now a captain. We have more calls every year – twice as many last year than just 15 years ago – and there are functionally about 8 of us who respond with any regularity – 11 total.

I appreciate the hell out of any group taking seriously the issue of recruitment, and even as important, retention. In the last ten years, it’s a literal truth that for every 3 or 4 who join our department, 1 will stick around more than a year. This is the case for most depts. It’s not for everybody.

I don’t like the idea of a special hunting season for firefighters/EMS. I actually do think it would get more folks volunteering, but I just have a moral conundrum about it. When we consider all those roles that exist within a society that are critical – volunteers, LEOs, teachers, medical, small business owners, large business owners – I have a tough time putting any on a pedestal above the others in regard to access to the Public Trust.

I have used dozens of hours of my personal leave over the years to respond to calls. I really do like the idea of allowing state employees 24 hours of leave to respond – but when I look at our own department and the departments adjacent, a small percentage are state employees – and I live 20 minutes from Helena. How do we help those who work in the private sector?

Marketing campaigns are great, though I question their efficacy. I don’t know much about the tax exemption, but I think that would be great too.

Here in Montana, a person who is a VFD member for 20 years, and attends their allotted 35 hours of training annually every one of those years, is eligible for $175 a month at the end of that 20 years. The Volunteer Firefighters Compensation Act, like many of the other proposed incentives, is appreciated, but it’s a nicety. No one joins or stays for it.


Here's some thoughts I have:

1. Force our departments of transportation to have paid and professional on-call teams that respond to vehicle accidents for traffic control and maybe other transportation-related situations. When it comes to accidents (over 70% of our calls), we respond for extraction, medical, and car fires – but the vast majority of those are traffic control. Holding signs, setting up cones, waiting for tow trucks, waiting for cleanup. This is an enormous suck of time, and is the most dangerous thing we do, and, theoretically, any incident lasting more than 4 hours should be handled by the DOT. I have yet to see it happen. Yep. It'll cost money, but one centrally located team could probably cover half a dozen rural fire districts.

2. The vast majority of our local tax dollars dedicated to the VFD benefit travelers who don’t pay local taxes. When VFD members respond to those accidents, they should be paid an hourly wage, and a damn good one because it's dangerous work, by the insurance companies of the accident-havers when those accident havers are not local taxpayers. A state office dedicated to acquiring those funds from insurance would need to be created. I've been involved with recouping expenses from commercial accidents, and we spend an inordinate amount of time doing paperwork, and don’t have any more.

3. 50 years ago, firefighters trained putting the wet stuff on the red stuff. Now, the amount of training just to be a basic responder is measured in hundreds of hours. HazMat, traffic control, gas leaks, medical assists, wildland fire, structure fire, and whatever else is thrown your way. I have seen the training overwhelm people and think it is one of the main issues of retention, and yet, the public expects professionals and frankly, you need to be trained to be safe. How do we navigate this in the volunteer world? I think paying wages for training may be part of it.

4. This is radical, but a requirement that US citizens engage in some sort of civic duty for a certain period of time. 5 years? I believe the shortage of volunteers we are seeing is simply a symptom of the Slow Death of Rural America and Civic Duty in general. When I was a kid, which was not that long ago, most able-bodied men I knew were volunteers. Only 40 years ago, there was a waiting list to join the local VFD. Those folks’ lives weren’t any easier than ours, and they didn’t have more free time. They believed in service. Our problem is a cultural one as much as anything.

Money, tax incentives, hunting preference, retirement, community praise - it's all nice. But the burnout and crisis is at base a function of a resource contraint, and the resource is willing souls. Many hands make light work. If we had a full roster, I can't imagine how much less stress we would all collectively endure and how much better we'd be.

"A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help." - Norman Maclean

 

[Cattleman]

I would not want the barriers to low or the incentives to high because then you will attract the wrong folks for the wrong reasons. Our VFD is pretty lucky as far as numbers go but a big problem is budget/funding. We have been trying to replace and old pumper truck for years, but the prices are crazy, the last 2 quotes we got were close to $450k and the quotes are only good for 7 days.

 

[Fire_9]

This is a tough one. I think a state would have to come up with some pretty big incentives to sway people and I agree with some of the sentiments above that it may attract the wrong people but overall I think it could be a good thing. The people that don't truly care about it will wash out.

I've been pretty fortunate in that my employers have paid me while I respond to fires. I'm sure I would have still reponded to some but I would have responded much less if I had to make up that time with vacation hours. I love working as a firefighter but I'm not sure I'd be willing to burn a good portion of the PTO to do it. I think it would be great if a state could reimburse employers for allowing their employees to respond to incidents.

Hopefully states can start coming up with a solution quickly because I know most department rosters are running pretty thin.

 

[Sasquatchewan]

I'm a volunteer firefighter and medical first responder for my Town and Rural Municipality. Our area is huge and there are about 25 of us on paper but it's much less in reality and we have a few probies who need supervision. We cover 800 km², this includes a town, three villages and has acreage communities, farms, ranches spread out throughout. We have a busy stretch of highway running in the middle of it, a busy lake and park in the summer, etc.

We used to average one call every three days but now it's a lot more than that, with roughly 2/3 of the calls being medical. We've already surpassed our mid-year average and it isn't slowing down. Winter usually slows down but Spring to Fall gets busy, it's not uncommon to get three separate calls in one day and it is often the same 2-4 guys responding.

We're only paid while on an actual call and we get a $3000 income tax rebate. We have decent equipment but our hall is falling apart. We struggle to get more money to fund some of our operations and often face backlash from some of the municipalities' constituents when we try to fund new projects.

It's hard and demanding, the average firefighter/medical first responder volunteers an additional 200 hours (some a lot more) of training every year on top of responding to calls. Ultimately, the lack of incentive and the time required is what draws people out. Some members get to a point where they chose their families (rightfully so) over responding to calls.

I'm fortunate to have an understanding employer who lets me respond to calls while at work, rule of thumb, I respond if I'm not busy or if it is a serious call.

There is a Federal Bill to raise the income tax rebate up to 10k vice 3k, but not sure that would help. Our community is doing a pretty good job at putting ourselves out there and being seen so that the general population sees us as a benefit, not just a service leeching off of their taxes ($100 fire levy per household).

 

[Cattleman]

I've been pretty fortunate in that my employers have paid me while I respond to fires

Same here, but off the top of my head 11 of the 22 guys on our VFD get paid by their employers while they respond to calls. A couple others who work locally can respond depending on the severity and the rest are basically self employed farmer/ranchers who always show up unless its during planting or harvest.

Same as @SaskHunter stated though, we have 22 guys and it unless its a structure fire on a midweek evening we only get about 10-12 guys show up and its always the same 5-6 guys doing everything so it can defintely wear them/us down.

 

[Benfromalbuquerque]

I’ve been a volunteer for the better part of a decade - at times just a firefighter, an Assistant Chief, a trustee, and now a captain. We have more calls every year – twice as many last year than just 15 years ago – and there are functionally about 8 of us who respond with any regularity – 11 total.

I appreciate the hell out of any group taking seriously the issue of recruitment, and even as important, retention. In the last ten years, it’s a literal truth that for every 3 or 4 who join our department, 1 will stick around more than a year. This is the case for most depts. It’s not for everybody.

I don’t like the idea of a special hunting season for firefighters/EMS. I actually do think it would get more folks volunteering, but I just have a moral conundrum about it. When we consider all those roles that exist within a society that are critical – volunteers, LEOs, teachers, medical, small business owners, large business owners – I have a tough time putting any on a pedestal above the others in regard to access to the Public Trust.

I have used dozens of hours of my personal leave over the years to respond to calls. I really do like the idea of allowing state employees 24 hours of leave to respond – but when I look at our own department and the departments adjacent, a small percentage are state employees – and I live 20 minutes from Helena. How do we help those who work in the private sector?

Marketing campaigns are great, though I question their efficacy. I don’t know much about the tax exemption, but I think that would be great too.

Here in Montana, a person who is a VFD member for 20 years, and attends their allotted 35 hours of training annually every one of those years, is eligible for $175 a month at the end of that 20 years. The Volunteer Firefighters Compensation Act, like many of the other proposed incentives, is appreciated, but it’s a nicety. No one joins or stays for it.


Here's some thoughts I have:

1. Force our departments of transportation to have paid and professional on-call teams that respond to vehicle accidents for traffic control and maybe other transportation-related situations. When it comes to accidents (over 70% of our calls), we respond for extraction, medical, and car fires – but the vast majority of those are traffic control. Holding signs, setting up cones, waiting for tow trucks, waiting for cleanup. This is an enormous suck of time, and is the most dangerous thing we do, and, theoretically, any incident lasting more than 4 hours should be handled by the DOT. I have yet to see it happen. Yep. It'll cost money, but one centrally located team could probably cover half a dozen rural fire districts.

2. The vast majority of our local tax dollars dedicated to the VFD benefit travelers who don’t pay local taxes. When VFD members respond to those accidents, they should be paid an hourly wage, and a damn good one because it's dangerous work, by the insurance companies of the accident-havers when those accident havers are not local taxpayers. A state office dedicated to acquiring those funds from insurance would need to be created. I've been involved with recouping expenses from commercial accidents, and we spend an inordinate amount of time doing paperwork, and don’t have any more.

3. 50 years ago, firefighters trained putting the wet stuff on the red stuff. Now, the amount of training just to be a basic responder is measured in hundreds of hours. HazMat, traffic control, gas leaks, medical assists, wildland fire, structure fire, and whatever else is thrown your way. I have seen the training overwhelm people and think it is one of the main issues of retention, and yet, the public expects professionals and frankly, you need to be trained to be safe. How do we navigate this in the volunteer world? I think paying wages for training may be part of it.

4. This is radical, but a requirement that US citizens engage in some sort of civic duty for a certain period of time. 5 years? I believe the shortage of volunteers we are seeing is simply a symptom of the Slow Death of Rural America and Civic Duty in general. When I was a kid, which was not that long ago, most able-bodied men I knew were volunteers. Only 40 years ago, there was a waiting list to join the local VFD. Those folks’ lives weren’t any easier than ours, and they didn’t have more free time. They believed in service. Our problem is a cultural one as much as anything.

Money, tax incentives, hunting preference, retirement, community praise - it's all nice. But the burnout and crisis is at base a function of a resource contraint, and the resource is willing souls. Many hands make light work. If we had a full roster, I can't imagine how much less stress we would all collectively endure and how much better we'd be.

"A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help." - Norman Maclean

This right here is all a county manager needs to know about their County VFD. Especially the medical response that has taken over the FD everywhere. Say for instance, it became a standard to require all cops carry EMT-B or higher, whooo damn there’d be an uproar. And yeah, DOT should also contribute to traffic control at the very least, but EMS too.

I'm a volunteer firefighter and medical first responder for my Town and Rural Municipality. Our area is huge and there are about 25 of us on paper but it's much less in reality and we have a few probies who need supervision. We cover 800 km², this includes a town, three villages and has acreage communities, farms, ranches spread out throughout. We have a busy stretch of highway running in the middle of it, a busy lake and park in the summer, etc.

We used to average one call every three days but now it's a lot more than that, with roughly 2/3 of the calls being medical. We've already surpassed our mid-year average and it isn't slowing down. Winter usually slows down but Spring to Fall gets busy, it's not uncommon to get three separate calls in one day and it is often the same 2-4 guys responding.

We're only paid while on an actual call and we get a $3000 income tax rebate. We have decent equipment but our hall is falling apart. We struggle to get more money to fund some of our operations and often face backlash from some of the municipalities' constituents when we try to fund new projects.

It's hard and demanding, the average firefighter/medical first responder volunteers an additional 200 hours (some a lot more) of training every year on top of responding to calls. Ultimately, the lack of incentive and the time required is what draws people out. Some members get to a point where they chose their families (rightfully so) over responding to calls.

I'm fortunate to have an understanding employer who lets me respond to calls while at work, rule of thumb, I respond if I'm not busy or if it is a serious call.

There is a Federal Bill to raise the income tax rebate up to 10k vice 3k, but not sure that would help. Our community is doing a pretty good job at putting ourselves out there and being seen so that the general population sees us as a benefit, not just a service leeching off of their taxes ($100 fire levy per household).

I like it, a lot. The best USA volunteers get is itemized deductions and in some states maybe a small pension after 20yrs service.

 

[warmer]

I retired from our local VFD after 26 years, all self-employed. 22 of those 26 years I was a volunteer EMT-B. We average 50-70 fire calls a year. Mostly stand-by, lift assist or traffic control. We averaged 125 Ambulance calls a year, the first 10 years after I got my EMT license, I went on 75 of those calls every year. I never asked for any compensation, but the thought of the State covering some of the lost income would be great. I currently have two employees (both of them are my son's) who are on the department. They are free to leave for a call and I pay them when they are gone. My contribution to the Community.
So until there is some compensation you are going to continue to have turnover.

 

[recon6036]

I’m the Director of a smaller Public Safety Department in Michigan, which means all of us are full time cross-trained Police Officers and Firefighters. We are supplemented on the fire side by 20 outstanding Volunteers.
In years past, we were able to hire Volunteers and train them ourselves in-house then they’d challenge the Written and practical test at the state level for their FFI/II/Haz mar certification. We could train them when it was convenient for them.
Now the state recently made it mandatory for the Volunteers to go thru a more structured 280 hour program.
Trying to find a volunteers who can commit to mandatory training every Tuesday and every Thursday evening, plus some weekends, for about 6 months is extremely difficult.
Training is no doubt needed but the new rules sure make it difficult and I’m certainly seeing a lack of interest.

 

[Sasquatchewan]

I retired from our local VFD after 26 years, all self-employed. 22 of those 26 years I was a volunteer EMT-B. We average 50-70 fire calls a year. Mostly stand-by, lift assist or traffic control. We averaged 125 Ambulance calls a year, the first 10 years after I got my EMT license, I went on 75 of those calls every year. I never asked for any compensation, but the thought of the State covering some of the lost income would be great. I currently have two employees (both of them are my son's) who are on the department. They are free to leave for a call and I pay them when they are gone. My contribution to the Community.
So until there is some compensation you are going to continue to have turnover.

We have a basic pay scale which only applies while on call, nothing crazy; <5 years is $20/hr, >5 years $25/hr and officers $30 an hour. The way I look at it, this money goes towards personal fuel, vehicle maintenance, safety shoes/boots which are not supplied for medical calls and additional personal FD swag to be properly identifiable while on medical calls so I don't look like a random dude (t-shirt, hoodie, etc).

I don't believe a single volunteer FF/EMT should pay out of pocket to respond to calls. I used to live 10km away from the hall, that's 20km every time I respond, attend training or go to the hall to do maintenance, all this stuff adds up.

Volunteers get a lot of chirps from full time guys, but we commit a tremendous amount of our time to better our communities and ultimately save lives. We have an extremely professional department and we train a lot in order to provide the best service, not every volunteer department is the same and I can confirm that after doing mutual aid calls with other departments, but mine is on point. We do it all, MVCs, structure fires, medical, wildland, etc.

As a side note, Paramedics love responding in our AOR, we go above and beyond to provide initial patient care and support them once they arrive on scene. We often get comments about how they wish "city FF" were like us.

 

[Ben Lamb]

SO what I'm hearing is that a week for your own hunting season and reduced price tags aren't the incentive some think?

Fascinating stuff gents. Thanks to all for your volunteerism and commitment to community!

 

[Sasquatchewan]

SO what I'm hearing is that a week for your own hunting season and reduced price tags aren't the incentive some think?

Fascinating stuff gents. Thanks to all for your volunteerism and commitment to community!

IMO, financial benefits would work better, ie; paid on calls, tax breaks and/or a small pension (I love the idea).

Having your own hunting season and reduced tags might attract the wrong kind of people. How do you measure who can hunt a particular season? All volunteer FF/EMT? Then some flaky departments/chiefs are going to get their buddies on that. Minimum training/call hours? Again, some departments are going to change the numbers so it works out, what about slow areas that get less calls, would we leave them out eventhough they are stand-by and ready to respond?

Pay your people and/or give them financial incentives. No volunteer I know does it for the money, but it sure is nice when that cheque comes in at the end of the year, usually around xmas time. That being said, I know there are volunteers who are in it for the wrong reasons and I could absolutely see people taking advantage of such an opportunity.

 

[Fire_9]

SO what I'm hearing is that a week for your own hunting season and reduced price tags aren't the incentive some think?

Fascinating stuff gents. Thanks to all for your volunteerism and commitment to community!

The reduced price tags are kind of a joke in my opinion. A nice gesture but what is that really saving someone? $100 a year? That's really going to incentivize people to risk their lives and be woken up by a pager at 2 am...

 

[Valley1320]

IMO, financial benefits would work better, ie; paid on calls, tax breaks and/or a small pension (I love the idea).

Having your own hunting season and reduced tags might attract the wrong kind of people. How do you measure who can hunt a particular season? All volunteer FF/EMT? Then some flaky departments/chiefs are going to get their buddies on that. Minimum training/call hours? Again, some departments are going to change the numbers so it works out, what about slow areas that get less calls, would we leave them out eventhough they are stand-by and ready to respond?

Pay your people and/or give them financial incentives. No volunteer I know does it for the money, but it sure is nice when that cheque comes in at the end of the year, usually around xmas time. That being said, I know there are volunteers who are in it for the wrong reasons and I could absolutely see people taking advantage of such an opportunity.

Well said!!!!!!!

 

[2rocky]

Former VF here. Started at 16 and would have considered Fire service as a career if I had had more guidance in looking at post secondary education and knowing what I know now. County funding and liability insurance is the biggest issue local departments face in our area. We just had a major consolodation with 7 local VFD's merging with a Tax supported district. So now instead of a $100 per dwelling suggested donation, we will have $265 for first and $50 per additional dwelling property tax assessment. That gets us paid staff in strategic areas during high probability call times.

I stepped out of the VFD when I had a young family and a job off the farm. I couldn't go out on a car wreck at 2 am then be worth a damn at my paid job. The training wasn't rigorous then but eventually we had to obtain FF1 Qualifications and I said to myself "if I wanted to do that I'd become a pro."

 

[Cattleman]

SO what I'm hearing is that a week for your own hunting season and reduced price tags aren't the incentive some think?

I would think that's a fair assessment. IMO good VFD guys are selfless and don't want/need to be recognized. They just want to be supported & appreciated by the local community. As far a recruiting new people i don't know the answer but what i do know is that incentivizing it to much in the wrong ways will attract the wrong people.

According to the NFPA there is 29,xxx Fire Departments in the US and 82% are all or mostly volunteer and according to this article.

Firefighters and Fire Departments by the Numbers | NFPA

Each year, NFPA® provides an overview of fire departments in the United States. The analysis includes firefighters, fire departments, apparatus, and stations. The results are based on data collected by two NFPA annual surveys, the US fire experience survey, and the fire service inventory survey...

www.nfpa.org

Very interesting look at these tables from the NFPA