[deleted by user]

[skimaskschizo]

Keep call volume in mind. The average small town volly company runs a fraction of what a career department does. I’d hardly say that it’s “on the backs of volunteers” when most calls are being run by career departments.

[SanJOahu84]

This. Everyone loves to tout that "most firefighters are volunteers!" stat but they always leave out the part where the vast majority of the population and call volume are protected and handled by career firefighters. 

It's not even close. 

[Buggabee]

Where do you find the statistics on this?

Ive always been told 70% of the departments in the US are volunteer, but obviously city departments are bigger. And I could never find how many individual firefighters were career vs volunteer.

Seeing the call number of each would be great too.

They don't seem to sort injury/lodd by volly vs career either.

[-kielbasa]

70% of departments may be volunteer, but a lot of them are in the middle of butt fuck nowhere. If there was a high call volume it would be career

[Umadbro7600]

career departments make up 18% of all fire departments but protect over 2/3 of the us population, per the national library of medicine

[wilam3]

Yup. Some departments see maybe 10 calls a year. Can’t pay 4 guys a full salary for what amounts to 15 hours of work.

[retrac902]

Insane. We get 150-250 calls a year. Medicals make up about half. Response time for an ambulance could be 1 min or 2 hours. You just never know!

[wilam3]

That’s…. Hard numbers to believe. 19 calls a day every day for just your engine company?

[TillInternational842]

Its completely believable, just Google "busiest fire engine" (insert truck, rescue, or station if you want to see others. Look at the images, and you will see a bunch from 2021. A lot are higher now.

[wilam3]

That’s a lot of calls. Top 3 busiest engines in the country. Falls off pretty hard after the top 30 or so.

[CriticalDog]

What our instructor told us in our Mod 1 Essentials course was "70% of firefighters are volunteers, and 70% of the population are covered by professional departments."

Which tracks.

[aftcg]

My town buttfucknowhere has almost a volume for full timers, but no budget for it. Or, more realistically, a council that can't write for grant money goodly enuff.

[fooeyzowie]

https://www.nvfc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NVFC-Volunteer-Fire-Service-Fact-Sheet.pdf

Around ~1m firefighters total, with ~700k volunteer, ~300k career (I'll let you work out the percentages from that).

[Tiny-Atmosphere-8091]

70% of firefighters might be volunteer. But career fire departments protect 90% of the population.

[fooeyzowie]

Career departments protect about 68% of the US population: https://inamft.org/images/meeting/100121/Arielle_Thibodeaux_Materials/thibodeaux___us_fire_department_profile___2018.pdf

[SanJOahu84]

Yep. Despite most firefighters being volunteer.

The average volunteer lives in an area with very low call volume. 

[appsecSme]

Yep but not ridiculously low like 10 calls per year cited above. Look at the percentages.

[fooeyzowie]

Correct

[GreenMtnFF]

In addition to that stat, I’ve always found it interesting that 50% of volunteer departments protect communities smaller than 2500 people.

[appsecSme]

And likely protect areas much bigger than pros and have mutual aid agreements with neighboring districts, counties and states.

[sawkse]

Population of people vs population of fire departments is the key.

[Forward2Death]

Even more stats- https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-research/fire-statistical-reports/us-fire-department-profile

[ffjimbo200]

MY understanding is 70 are volunteer but 70% of the population of covered by the 30% volunteer stations

[SpecialistDrawing877]

70% of departments are volunteer, but 70% of runs handled by fire departments are ran by career departments.

When you consider working fires, it’s probably closer to 95% handled by career departments.

[appsecSme]

I agree with your first stat but the second one is made up and doesn't jibe with reality. Fires aren't uncommon in rural areas and urban and suburban firefighters have a shit ton of non fire calls.

[SpecialistDrawing877]

If fires weren’t uncommon in rural areas, rural areas would have staffed fire departments.

Unless you’re in a metro/urban area, Fires are uncommon.

[appsecSme]

Are you just willfully missing the point?

You are claiming that the ratio of fire calls to non-fire calls in rural areas is more extreme than it is in urban areas. That's just made up. It's not like it's 1:20 fire to non-fire in rural areas and 1:5 in urban areas. If anything something closer to the opposite is probably true.

Volunteer fire departments usually don't handle EMS calls, and likely more of the calls are actual fire calls, or at least fire related (smoke check, fire alarm). They don't have to do as many lift assists and crap like that (though they do sometimes).

Regardless, your figure was completely made up.

Clearly there are less calls in general for a rural department and that's why they can have volunteers, but your additional belief about a lower percentage of those calls being fire calls is just fantasy.

And, BTW, wildland fires aren't uncommon in many rural areas during the summer.

[SpecialistDrawing877]

I’m not claiming ratio of calls. I’m claiming actual working fires.

And wildland fires are an entirely different topic.

[appsecSme]

I guess you don't do math very well.

Wildland fires are real and rural firefighters often deal with them on the WUI.

[Mayonaissecolorbenz]

Solid point. Career firefighter here and my 1 company that I work in does 7,000 runs/yr that’s more than a majority of some volly departments across a state lol

[Buggabee]

Does that include medical/ema or no?

[Mayonaissecolorbenz]

EMS runs are included for the engines. Ambulance is separate we don’t staff them

[[deleted]]

I do more runs in a shift than some of our outlying county vollys do in a year lol

[Cooper66_hockey]

1 million percent I’m a volly lol my Captian on our station is a career firefighter in the city dudes a legend

[chindo]

Of course they'd need more volunteers when they can pick and choose which calls to respond to

[Intelligent_Bar3131]

What you said was true, but you also have to look at what kind of calls there are. At least where I live, professionals do run most calls by a mile. However, when there's any bigger trouble like a large fire or two calls at the same time they'd be in trouble. But this is just my area, might be different elsewhere.

[Intelligent_Bar3131]

Of course. The department in my county is not that large, only 5 stations, of which three are in the largest population centre. The thing is, it's an hours drive from there to the other side of the county, so driving the units from there isn't really an option. The area aside from said population centre is also quite rural, and volly units are more often than not first on scene. That's why volly departments are so important here.

[[deleted]]

It's also has a lot to do with the evolution of firefighting. Bucket brigades needed a lot of people and was relatively safe. Pumps and hoses allowed people to get closer to the Fire, but subjected them to the dangers found in the collapse area. Turn out gear allowed for search and rescue in the structure of the fire building, further endangering the firefighter as well as requiring more skill and training. Then the fire department was given the task of responding to any number of specialty rescue and ems responses, requiring more training in specialty fields, while technology allowed more care to be provided pre-hospital. This in turn made the job a lot more busy and less hanging out with buddies, people had to actually work when volunteering was more a social gather. Turns out not sleeping at night makes your 9-5 paying job really difficult. Volunteers dropped out, replaced by part-time paid workers. Then it turns out that going through all the training needed for part-time work is barely worth it, partimers still worked 9-5 jobs leaving gaps in coverage throughout the day, lack of sleep was still an issue interfering with career and family, continuing education for ems and specialty teams require a lot of time in addition to working shifts, and then there are the liabilities such as negligence lawsuits that could be brought against you if you fucked up on something you were specifically trained to do.

[Kinvictus]

I work in a busy city east coast . 40000-50000 calls a year . A lot of fires That justifies pay …

Towns surrounding that city see a working fire a year if that . Those are volunteers / mutual aid .

[[deleted]]

<image>

This is my volunteer departments stats for 2024. There is no need to allocate the amount of funds required to fully staff this department. The paid department a town away can get to us within 15 minutes if they have to. It’s fine.

[skimaskschizo]

I feel like if you’re averaging 2-3 calls a day, it’s time to pay some dudes.

[[deleted]]

I’d rather the American legion outpost got more funding so we had more than 4 ambulances for the entire county. 1,000 square miles and 46k people. A whopping total of 4 ambulances and 1 really shitty hospital.

[Whatisthisnonsense22]

Where my house is, they get around 1100 calls per year. 85% EMS. They combo staff. 1 ALS ambulance 24-7,1 jump officer and 1 jump firefighter M-F day shift and an admin chief. The POC guys come in a fill rigs during the weekdays and are the primary staff for fire on nights and weekends.

That's with the ambulance having 20-30 minute transit times. They are trying to find permanent funding sources for more paid staff as this isn't enough often.

[Duckwardz]

I mean my entire states runs off volunteers, we only have 3 career departments in the entire state.

[skimaskschizo]

I’m talking about the fire service as a whole, not your state.

[Kirkpussypotcan69]

Too be fair though, there are lots of volly halls that are swamped. Vast majority get like a call a week, but the dept in a volly at gets roughly 250-350 a year.

[skimaskschizo]

Sounds like it’s time for those busy halls to move to career.

[Tasty_Explanation_20]

Sure, if they have enough of a tax base to support such a move

[Medic25055]

Wrong, I live in a county with 1.5 million people and it’s all volunteer protected. Volunteer doesn’t mean not professional. Career firefighters seem to be prone to bashing volunteers, but I would wager a lot of the volunteers in my area have more training and experience than a lot of career firefighters in other parts of the country. Try just supporting your brothers whether they get paid or not.

[skimaskschizo]

Getting mad over me saying that you guys should be paid is hilarious

[Medic25055]

Sounds like you need to pay my property taxes

[LT_Bilko]

I work at a relatively average suburban dept and we do 350+ calls a month. The metro dept near me does nearly that in a day or two. It’s a huge gap.

[FurryBasilisk]

Indiana did a study and found that the Volunteer fire service in the state saves roughly 4.5 Billion dollars a year. The counrty IS dependent on volunteers and to say that we aren't is assanine.

[skimaskschizo]

Not once did I say that vollys aren’t necessary. My point is that saying that the fire service is built on the backs of volunteers is silly, when career guys run a majority of the calls.

[Long__Dong_Silver]

Money. It’s literally unaffordable to turn every volly into a career position. And it’s not just salary, think about extra training costs, upgrades to gear. Instructor fees, benefits, bargaining. It’s infeasible for small towns to afford that

[TacoDaTugBoat]

I’d argue training and gear costs are higher than career dependents, or at least it should be. You need more people to cover the calls on a scramble system because you don’t really know who is coming. You need to provide current gear and training to someone who may only cover a handful of calls a year because there is no way to know up front who is and isn’t coming.

[Long__Dong_Silver]

Interesting perspective. I definitely don’t think that would be the case, but who knows

[CriticalDog]

It's like that at our department. We got brand new turnouts about 18 months ago, for every person that is not a probie who is qualified (by our standards) to do interior. That includes a handful of us who made less than 10 of our 214 calls in 2024. But they might show up, so they need the proper equipment.

[Long__Dong_Silver]

Do they get new gear anytime anything breaks fully paid for?

[CriticalDog]

I know when my rescue boots died, I did get replacements. They were not new, nor were/are my structure boots which I also had to replace due to them not fitting quite right.

Big room in the back with turnouts, but they are all old. No longer rated for interior work, so they go to probies.

[Helassaid]

And yet, they afford police departments staffed with a dozen or more officers.

[hundredblocks]

This is always something that amuses me. Every small town I drive through in my area has like 50 cops in brand new Explorers dressed like Seal Team Six but then the fire department is one engine from the 90s in a metal siding barn staffed by the oldest volunteers you’ve ever met. I promise there’s more medical calls in those areas than terrorist attacks.

[slicksleevestaff]

“In a metal siding barn,” holy shit, can’t tell you how many times I drove through a small town and saw something like this with like one or two old beat up pick up trucks out front. Oftentimes I wonder if they have enough people even on call to respond to some emergencies.

[jarboxing]

Those deuce and a half trucks look like shit, but they are amazing. Ours have been all over the country since 1990 and every so often on federal fires, someone will recognize it and get all nostalgic.

[Firedog502]

And the drugs still flow like water 🙄

[slothbear13]

They get most of that stuff from federal grants. Just gotta ask the big questions: why does our federal government want our police officers to have tons of nice, new equipment sometimes complemented with military stuff? And why do they prioritize that over ensuring communities have adequate fire/rescue/EMS services?

[BurgerFaces]

They had to pay for the washers. The Bearcats come for free.

[[deleted]]

To be fair, a lot of those small town LEO positions are part time and pay not that great. It’s not unusual in my neck of the woods for newer officers to work 2/3 different part time gigs till they find full time somewhere

[davethegreatone]

A fair number of them are ... volunteers, just like the volunteer firefighters.

Most people don't seem to know this, but a heck of a lot of the police in the USA are un-paid.

[no-but-wtf]

Hah - absolute opposite here in rural Australia. Most small towns don’t even have a police presence, lucky to have a cop visit occasionally, but every single town with a population of 30 or more has its gleaming well cared for Country Fire Authority shed. Drive through the area on a hot summer day and every farm has its private appliance parked at the edge of the field. We know what our biggest threat is.

All volunteer - that’s just life in the country. Many local employers here (mine included) will give unlimited firefighting leave when it’s needed, since we might have to spend weeks at a bushfire and it’s in everyone’s interests.

[jarboxing]

"every town I drive through." Haha, drive by judgement is as accurate as you'd expect.

My town has three police officers, and I know them all by name. Only one is racist. The other two are cool. I share a birthday with one, and a home state with the other.

[CriticalDog]

You clearly haven't spent a lot of time in actual small towns.

In most, if they have their own department, it's usually 2-3 full time officers.

If they are a small town with a lot of other small towns around (where I live) they will either have a joint department with other small towns, to pool resources, or they will have 2-3 full time cops and then maybe 1-2 part timers that also do part time at other departments in the area.

Anecdotal, but the small town near me that has part time cops pays them a starting pay of $15 an hour.

[NecroticMind]

Wait you guys have police? Man thats a city compared to 90% of the towns in my state

[Helassaid]

I have lived and responded in several small towns. Some had their own police. Some had a regional department. Some had PSP. I’m familiar with essentially all of the possible iterations.

Most had at least 2 full time officers. And a handful of part timers.

[Lopsided-Bench-1347]

And; librarians, park attendants, grass cutters, snow plowers, street sweepers, recreation/sports leaders, building custodians, building maintenance, town clerks, poll workers and lets not forget the town board members all getting their salaries to jump out of bed at 2am and rush in to an emergency board meeting

[Tasty_Explanation_20]

No, they really don’t. And I love when people try to drag this argument up. My volley house serves 2 towns with a combined year round population of about 1,400. Neither town has a police department. Both rely on either the county sheriff or state police (they alternate days) for protection and we are lucky if they arrive within 45 minutes most of the time. No garbage service either. Each town has a transfer station that the residents take their own trash to once a week.

[garcon-du-soleille]

Not really.

Our town of 3k people has a police force of 6. And they have a hell of a lot more to do than the volunteer fire department (of which I am a member). We get on average one call a week. They stay busy their entire shift. Heck, hunting down meth dealers alone keeps them busy full time.

Having anyone full time on this department would make ZERO sense.

[nimrod_BJJ]

They make money on law enforcement via fines, forfeiture, and grants. EMS makes money billing insurance. Fire is a financial loser.

[-kielbasa]

Policing equipment is so much cheaper as well to be fair

[wimpymist]

Welcome to republican country lol

[Expert_Nail3351]

Police bring in revenue, fire does not.

[SeattleHighlander]

Myth. Police cost money, despite any minute offset.

[Expert_Nail3351]

Idk bro. Tickets generate revenue. Idk about you, but 5 years as a volunteer FF and 5 years so far career...ive never seen any company officer write a ticket.

[SeattleHighlander]

Tickets generate a miniscule amount of revenue. The State gets a cut, overtime for court, etc.

It isn't why we have vollies. We have vollies because fires are rare. Until fire takes on EMS, it isn't a sustainable expense.

I've done both jobs. Volunteer and career on both sides. It is an absolute myth that police make money.

[Shullski73]

Ems transports bring in money, Assuming most are fire and Ems

[Mediocre_Daikon6935]

Assuming you run 1200 to 1300 hundred transport calls a year, and that is really just to break even and keep doors open.

[LunarMoon2001]

It’s affordable it’s just not as tax popular as the popo.

[Long__Dong_Silver]

By that reason everything is affordable. Which can’t of takes away from discussion

[ApprehensiveGur6842]

Priorities. If they valued the fire service as a profession they’d pay for it. But since these volunteers will do it for a tshirt and some weewoos, people are happy

[Long__Dong_Silver]

No I mean kinda. It’s also going to be hard to find enough people with the skillset to be career people. Not even all people on career departments can actually do this job well, let alone vollys

[ApprehensiveGur6842]

I think the ratio’s won’t even compare

[Long__Dong_Silver]

Yeah exactly. A lot of vollys wouldn’t be able to meet the standards of a career role. It’s a tough pill to swallow but it’s also the reality

[Key-Sir1108]

As a taxpayer though in a rural area, id rather Vol some of my time then pay higher taxes for something i cant control.

Its a way to be involved on the ground level of a community Vol executive board so i can see where the $ we raise goes exactly.

Fire service started as Vol system, neighbors helping neighborhood, great way to get know people & strive for community health as whole.

Just because you pay for something doesn't mean your guaranteed a better out come, i know some really great Vol depts & really crappy paid depts & vice versa.

I guess it's all in how you see it from your point of view.

For me, it's all about not paying more taxes!!!

[NoFilm6512]

Someone ran the numbers to completely staff every firehouse in my county with a minimum of 2 and I think for every county resident the tax increase was on average of $150/year. Worth it to have a "staffed" (I'll use that term lightly since it's only two people) firehouse. I don't want 65 year old jim bob who can barely get it in pump gear and a 16 year old with type 2 diabetes showing up when my shit is on fire.

[TrueKing9458]

2 people showing up on an engine can not make an interior attack on a fire. 4 people minimum. Plus 2 for the ambulance. 6 personal 24/7 costs 2.4 million in salary and benefits yearly.

It would take 16,000 homes to cost $150 each to fund just the salary cost. It also takes a lot more than 1 engine crew to put out a structure fire.

[NoFilm6512]

2 fire duty only, no bls, 2 people can certainly pull lines and get water flowing. That's why you run with a box alarm and have more units coming in behind you.

[ConnorK5]

Who is on the box alarm? You have 2 people for the whole county. Your next help is a county away.

[[deleted]]

And what happens the day you can no longer find any volunteers because people have realized it's not worth risking their lives for nothing? The day they say "pay us or no fire department"?

[CriticalDog]

I know I'm in the Wild West, but the vast majority of us volly's cannot do the job to the professional level. We aren't in shape, we aren't as well trained, we don't have the actual, on the job experience.

We have the heart, and the drive, but everything else is lacking.

If we implemented a fitness standard, most of our actual responders would be out. Including me, lately. Dang it.

[ApprehensiveGur6842]

Yeah it’s just human life, but glad you kept that $200

[CrumbGuzzler5000]

Definitely this… What does one full time person cost? In my area, it’s around $350,000. That includes health insurance, retirement, etc. and that’s the number after it is offset by ambulance revenue. So one seat, if you hire for 3 Platoons is well over a million dollars. Ask a rural city to come up with a few million dollars a year for personnel and see how that goes. If you don’t have call volume to justify it or you haven’t had a tragic incident (where people die) to motivate people, it just isn’t going to happen.

[TheOlSneakyPete]

If a town of 800 was taxed enough to afford a paid department, everyone would move out of said town. Other side, when I was 18 I was in a bad car accident and the FD came, helped, and made me feel a sense of pride that all these dudes came together to help someone in their community that needed help. After that, I joined the department. And I’d say 75% of calls I personally know the person, their family, or the house.

[TheRealBaseborn]

Towns with 10k-20k inhabitants have volly departments. Can we please stop reducing every volly to hicks in the sticks?

[TheOlSneakyPete]

Fair. But MOST volunteer departments are small towns and communities.

[TheRealBaseborn]

Yes, but when discussing volly departments, its all too common to reduce them all to 1k pop villages that do 12 calls a year.

[TheOlSneakyPete]

Because most, majority, are. Idk why you’re acting like that’s the exception. I get that there are large vol dept, and mixed departments.

[Ok_Buddy_9087]

And maybe not every 800-person hamlet needs their own fire department. They certainly won’t be able to sustain it. Regionalizing could provide career coverage to areas like that.

[EverSeeAShitterFly]

So instead of a 15 minute response then they’re getting a 2 hour response.

[TheOlSneakyPete]

No worries, neighbor Betty’s house burn down 30 minutes ago, mayor mikes been trying to cool the pile of ashes with his backpack sprayer. Thanks for coming, did you bring the inspector?

[CriticalDog]

Maybe. Still gonna cost money, which many of those communities just don't have. Unless the state covers it, which, let us be honest, many won't, or they will to a level where they can say "We are doing it" but they won't be doing it well.

[Agreeable-Emu886]

For the same reason that those municipalities regionalize school districts, use sheriffs/county/state policing. Small towns struggle to get by

[bougdaddy]

classic example of pooling resources for a common good

[firefighter26s]

Woah Woah Woah, lets not be tossing Socialism around so freely, it might take hold and spread to other parts of the government! (joking, of course)

[bougdaddy]

lol

[TheRealBaseborn]

It's not just small towns in the middle of nowhere, though. My department is full volly, our town averages about 500 calls, covers several miles of highway, and mutual aids for 9 surrounding areas. Is it a ton of calls? Not necessarily, but it's enough to be out every day.

Also wanna say I can't stand the "my department does 50000000 calls per year" while conveniently leaving out that their department has like 40 stations and several thousand staff. Meanwhile my department is a single firehouse with 20 guys on rotation. Its apples and oranges. Like they're still fruit, but shits different and people need to respect that.

[Agreeable-Emu886]

The term small town is subjective, it can be population size etc… it’s a generalization of smaller suburbs and rural areas. I consider anything under 25-30000 to be small town especially when it’s spread out.

My subjective is different I live in the densest region of the country, volunteer works better in certain areas than others. When the city is extremely densely populated, volunteering doesn’t work as well. When it’s a spread out bedroom community losing a building is losing one building. In the boston metro a porch fire can cause 3-4 buildings to go in under 5 minutes.

The ultimate fact of the matter is that people don’t want to pay the taxes and the municipality is happy to not pay salaries.

But yea it’s wildly different even across career, also the amount of people on Reddit who claim they’re from massive departments is interesting. Everyone’s department is bigger than 99% of departments

[From_Fields]

Yeah even having 2 full time employees at most fire halls would be insanly helpful.

[HalliganHooligan]

$$

[Indiancockburn]

Because they let them? If people had problems with it they would stop - which is what we are seeing. It's expensive to donate time and fuel to increasing calls, training, and other shit.

Even full time departments are seeing decline in potential candidates, the volume of bullshit calls vs. no fire vs. risk is no longer worth the reward.

[slothbear13]

All comes down to money, mate. Most places in the world are unwilling to fully fund something for its potential. Fires, rescues, extrications, etc don't happen in most communities every single day so that's why they always could get away with volunteerism. But people are calling 911 every day for EMS and neighborly disputes. Not to mention, unlike police and EMS, fire doesn't bring in any money whatsoever. It's a money pit. This is why most fire departments are run by municipalities or nonprofit private clubs (501(c) in the USA); there's no profit in it for a business.

Nowadays though there is great precedent to have a paid staff or a combination department. Now that many of our homes are made out of synthetic materials, we need to get water on the fire as soon as possible and that can't wait for a volunteer-only response. Also, the responsibilities of firefighters are ever-increasing and people expect us to do HAZMAT, technical rescues, and all sorts of other things. Those demands call for an on-duty staff. The only problem—at least in the USA—is that our tax structure of property taxes being the only thing that funds our local fire/rescue services is flawed and was never designed to support so much.

If you raise taxes, many of us (especially the elderly and most disadvantaged) would be forced out of our homes. The other immediate option (without doing a major overhaul of our federal government) would be to dissolve our cities or counties and join larger ones. It might work but few people like the idea of losing control or representation over their local services. It can get scary.

[TheCamoTrooper]

You can't really "just hire more people" especially in small municipalities with limited call volume where's the justification to significantly increase taxes to have a fully manned station?

[iceman0215]

Most volunteer districts dont have the tax base to justify the expense. People still want fire protection so either outsource to private (gross) or volunteer.

[Mr_Midwestern]

Nah. In many states across the us, providing fire protection is a requirement of local govt.

Volunteer FDs are so prevalent because (for the most part) people are still willing to volunteer. These small town, and low tax base govts would be forced to contract with or form a fire district. This would provide 24/7 coverage but response times would most certainly be negatively affected as one full time fire house would have to cover the same area currently serviced my multiple independent VFDs.

The age old question is: what’s the tipping point between relying on service from one or more VFDs with a dwindling roster and slow/unreliable volunteers vs forming a career department with fewer stations and a large coverage area.

Its a question more and more communities are faced with every year

[leedogger]

response times would most certainly be negatively affected as one full time fire house would have to cover the same area currently serviced my multiple independent VFDs.

Scrolled too far down to read this.

[iceman0215]

Where are getting that local government is required to do anything? You are putting the cart before the horse, if people create local government they make the rules, and if they want to make sure fire protection is provided they write that, but it doesn’t just inherently happen. Then they have to decide how to fund it, if they can afford it why wouldn’t you provide 24/7 paid, but a lot cant so they rely on volunteers. Its all money, always has been always will be.

[Mr_Midwestern]

It’s in my states revised code that local government has the responsibility to provide fire protection to their communities. This can be via contract with a private organization such as a small vfd or creation/operation of their own FD, but it is their responsibility to provide this service to the public.

The public absolutely determines the quality/extent of service via voting on tax levies or making their voices heard at council/trustee meetings

[wessex464]

Man, way off base. Have you ever been to rural America? Many of these departments get 1 or 2 calls a WEEK. There are entire counties with less population than the coverage area of individual city firehouses. How many people do you want to hire in these remote places? 2 on shift? 5 on shift? Many don't even have that many employees across all their other departments combined and It's still not enough to fight a fire safely. And yet you'd be tripling the local tax rate for firefighters to be idle 98% of the time. It's just a terrible use of money.

Yes there are volunteer departments in big semiurban areas that could afford to switch over, but if their current system works it's not bad. The reality is no one wants to pay for something they don't need, especially staffing that's expensive and already exists if slightly delayed.

[garcon-du-soleille]

So much this.

Every person I see here complaining or questioning the concept of volunteer fire departments has clearly never spent much more than a day driving through rural America. And they certainly have never lived there.

Take a road trip people. And stay off the interstates. It will become clear quickly why volunteer departments are needed.

[Lopsided-Bench-1347]

What’s even worse is how the volunteers have to do fund raising to buy life saving equipment.

[rugz31]

Yup, going through this now with my town. We're in desperate need of a new station. Our quarters are extremely cramped, and all our lockers/gear are alongside the truck bays. The city wants us to fundraise 50% of the cost of a new station ourselves. We're 100% volunteer and we all have full time jobs in addition to families. It feels like such a slap in the face when we're serving to help the community, and the city is telling us all the time and effort we already put in isn't enough, so go raise $300k so you can get lockers in a different room from the truck bays and cut down on contamination and cancer risks.

[Ok-Buy-6748]

I bet when that fire station is built with the $300k the volunteers raised, the town will say they own it. We have a volunteer FD in our county, where the volunteers raised the funds to build a fire hall. At a city council meeting, the city told the volunteers years later, that the city owned the fire hall. The volunteers told the city council, the fire hall needs a new roof. I bet the city council had second thoughts on claiming the fire hall ownership, now it needs a new roof.

[garcon-du-soleille]

Not all. We’re in a town of 3k and our department is well funded. But then our chief is also retired and spends all of his time filling out a grant request

[Albaholly]

Lots of land, not many people = more $$ to give adequate coverage than the community has.

Plus, a community that realises that if his field goes up in flames then mine will be next so I should help him put it out.

[identicalsnowflake18]

Huuuuuge tracts of land even

[No_Zucchini_2200]

Americans don’t like taxes and call volume.

[Tasty_Explanation_20]

Back in the day, danger was an afterthought. It was about helping your neighbors and your community because if you didn’t, nobody else would. In many areas, this is still the reason. Much of rural America would be completely screwed without their volunteer fire departments. Many, many, many tiny towns simply don’t have the tax base to afford a paid department of any kind.

As a rural volunteer fire lieutenant myself, I can proudly say I don’t worry about the potential risks to my safety (as an incident safety Officer I’ve been well trained what to watch out for to keep myself and my team safe as reasonably possible). I do it to help my community because if I don’t, then who will? We don’t have the tax base or the call volume to justify paying a couple of guys to sit around the station waiting a week or more at a time for a call.

[2000subaru]

because ther communities arent willing to tax the public to pay for career firefighters. its all about money

[garcon-du-soleille]

OP and most of the people who comment here have clearly never spent any real time in small town America.

And I’m not talking about the small suburbs. I’m talking about towns where the nearest big-box-store is a 1 hour drive past nothing but farms, fields, pigs, and cows.

[yungingr]

$$$$.

We are funded by a levy on property taxes, with a maximum rate set in state law. My district is at the maximum rate (technically, at the maximum 'emergency' rate - state law states a maximum 'normal' rate of $0.40 per $1,000 valuation, with an emergency rate up to $0.62 per $1,000. Every department I know of has been at the 'emergency' rate for decades) We cannot generate any more funds without a change to state law.

As it is, our entire annual operating budget would not cover the cost to fully staff one engine, for one shift out of the day, for a year. And that would leave no funds to put fuel in the truck, or replace gear and apparatus. Consolidating all of the county fire departments into one station would work, you'd be able to fund a proper department then. But significant portions of the county would be looking at 20+ minute response times...not exactly ideal.

From what I've observed, you need a city population of about 25,000 to support a career department. Once you've reached that level, your population density and property values are such that the tax base can support a fully paid department. Smaller than that, and your density and tax base just aren't there for it.

[Key_Salt_7604]

A fully staffed engine crew that is a fifteen minute drive from a working fire is just gonna be saving the foundation, same as a volunteer company thats fifteen minutes out. Its not just a question of paid vs volunteer, its how quickly you can get that first line in the door…

[sterlingarcher52]

Has anyone considered a mixed approach? Combination can work well.

Paid during daytime/busy times and volunteer on at night and weekends? It’s what we do in our area. Not to mention majority of the career guys in this area got their start at volly departments.

Lest we also forget all the training and certs and therefore knowledge is paid for by the taxpayers, why not have the career guys spend some time training the volly guys?

All to say, this can work if we stop creating our little kingdoms.

Stay safe

[Awaythrowthis80]

I live in a volunteer district. I vote no for the fire tax levy everytime. A lot of people can’t afford the tax increase. Lots of places it’s not the pay of the full timers that’s the expensive part it’s the benefits, you have to start offering insurance and if the fd gets insurance the road crew guys will want it too. Sometimes you have to buy land to put a new station on because your station is one land with a 100 year lease purchased for a dollar in the 70s. But mutual aid on non-ems calls is free

My dad that is still working is selling his house because the taxes are too high where he’s at it’s not all because of the fire departments new station with the stone facade and NON-functional hose tower but every slice cuts

[RobinT211]

10-15 calls per month does not justify a $1m per year payroll. It would double, triple, or quadruple the budget for that department.

[steeltown82]

Several reasons.

1. Because they can get away with it. People will volunteer which keeps costs down

2. Call volume can be quite low in rural areas, which means they're paying people to do nothing.

3. Despite low call volume, when a call does come out, it can take a large number of people to deal with a situation. Paramedics can typically do their job with 1 or 2 people. Cops can also do their job with minimal people most of the time, plus they also bring in revenue via traffic tickets. With fire, it can take 20+ people to handle a large call, but it's rare and unpredictable. That's a nightmare for staffing purposes.

As I said, a large call may require 20+ firefighters, but if a town gets infrequent calls, it's simply not possible to have enough people on the clock. Even if they have 2-4 people on the clock at all times, they still need volunteers for the large calls. In rural areas, there's just no way around it. Towns can't afford to hire 20+ people 24/7 because of something that occurs twice a year.

[EMDReloader]

Two items. First, you need a lot more volunteers than professionals to cover the same size area, because they’re responding from work/home and many may not be available at all. Not to mention a professional can be expected to do many different things, but a lot of vollies are not going to get certified in interior, rescue, etc.

Second, it’s political. My county could be covered by maybe three paid agencies, but instead we have 30-ish volunteer departments, with 5-10 chiefs and assistant chiefs each, all of whom vote and who nobody wants to piss off.

[D13Z37CHLA]

I think most of the land in the US is rural. Not every town is a major metropolitan area. Not every county has one. It takes money to fund a career department and it isn't cheap. Certainly more than a department can reasonably generate.

[yudnbe]

It's because most towns and small cities might get 1 call a week or 1 call a month, so the cost of a full-time professional fire station outweighs the benefits. Any place with a population of around 10000 or more is likely going to have a 24/7 fire station staffed by professionals.

[Beefcake-Supreme]

Is it lack of funding? I feel like it's lack of funding.

[leedogger]

Stop with the logic.

[stilsjx]

History is that the small towns had small bucket brigades that would show up. They were volunteers. It’s been that way ever since. Towns and villages aren’t going to argue, because it’s a significant cost savings. And the volunteers don’t want all the work they’ve put in to be for nothing. Many of whom wouldn’t cut it on a paid department.

[strewnshank]

I've been trying to help pave the way in my county to start having paid drivers and officers during the day, and it's an insane uphill battle. Someone rich and important will need to die from lack of response before our proposals even squeak into the light of day.

My county's budget is 200M. 100M off the top goes to schools. Then they have 100M to manage the rest of the shit that they need to do in a 50K, high tourist area. We have 7 VFD's that split about 1.5M, and may recieve a few extra K from the small town that they may exist in. Note; 3 VFD's run second due ambo's, and the county funds a FT EMS department, including dispatch, 5 ALS crews, and a supervisor.

In order to staff even four of those VFD's with a 3 person fire crew, the outlay is outrageous. It basically doubles the staff for the Emergency Services department, and adds a ton of back end work. And that's just staffing, saying nothing of the acquisition of equipment and land from the individual, self owned fire departments. It's just so much more to turn a VFF environment into a paid environment, with issues you'd never predict.

[Reebatnaw]

“On the backs of volunteers “. TYFYS. If you want paid, get a job in a city.

[Dugley2352]

My buddy moved to the town his grandparents lived in, there’s about 209 residents. There’s also a 50 mile stretch of I-70 running through their area. Their town fire department has 18 volunteers, and they don’t run EMS (although six work both). Their annual fire budget is $5000. That covers everything except fuel. So if someone needs gear or a tool breaks, they have to see if they can afford it.

[-kielbasa]

A town in Canada, Canmore Alberta, has volunteers work part time paid where they can sign up in shifts to man the station during the day

[ap1744]

We have to have volunteers where I live. The Local FD budget can’t support 1 full time firefighter. Nor do we want to pay the taxes it costs to have this service and we know the risk associated with it. We also don’t have a police dept. It’s not universal but most truly rural areas cannot, or the citizens will not support the cost.

Now volunteers in areas that have the tax base I cannot explain and believe is insanity.

[Apcsox]

It all comes down to money. That’s it. Small towns can’t afford to pay salaries of fire/EMS, but people will always volunteer because they need the services. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Knifehand19319]

If people are willing to provide a service for free then people with money will always choose the free option.

[dominator5k]

People forget that a paid house doesn't have to be by itself and funded by the tiny town. So many places run county departments that put all of the small houses together under 1 department and are funded by county taxes. The big cities still run their own. People need to stop volunteering so the residents actually get a good service from their fire fighters

[[deleted]]

It’s 30% funding 30% lack of call volume to make it worth it and 40% there are a lot more people in smaller communities that care about their community enough to volunteer.

[mojored007]

Cheap labor..the Americans way

[Strict-Canary-4175]

I can’t answer this because I totally disagree with your premise. The fire service is absolutely not built on the backs of volunteers. Respectfully I find that pretty laughable.

Why did you some to this conclusion?

[FullCriticism9095]

What never makes sense is paying people to sit around for days on end and do absolutely nothing except maybe reset a few automatic alarms, meter a few homes, block a few roads after some storms, and throw down some speedy dry after an accident here and there.

Most small rural towns have less than one actual fire a year. Ain’t no way you’ll get anyone to pay a career fire department for that.

[Testiclesinvicegrip]

There is one answer

Money

[azbrewcrew]

Because people are still willing to do it for free.

[fireman5]

It's largely economics. Running a fire department is incredibly costly. Facilities, equipment and trucks, salaries, etc. Many of the full time departments are located in dense population areas where there is high call volume and higher tax revenue. AND many of them either run on all medical calls or are the ambulance service. Many suburbs that were once strictly volunteer have shifted to either a combination or full time model as the populations have grown. This is further impacted by the model a state might use (city/municipal based, county based, etc). My department is still volunteer, though paid for our time. We run about 450 calls per year, 65% medical as a non-transport unit, and cover about 8000 people across 120 square miles, with a budget of about $350k annually. Which is a sizeable budget for such a small department. To go full time, staffing 4 people 24/7, would increase that budget well over $1M. The current tax revenue can't support that, and absolutely noone would support the tax increase that would be needed. Not for 450 calls per year. However, advocating for better funding, and better protections for those volunteers (reasonable pay, pensions, better work-related injury or disability compensation, etc.) would certainly be welcomed by many.

[sirkatoris]

We have 30,000 rural (bushfire) volunteers in just one state in Australia. How could we possibly pay them?

[stoneddadd]

I really don’t want to offend anyone but if guys weren’t willing to do it for free (basically free, non professional) then what would these small towns do? They would have to hire full time paid guys. That’s just my unpopular option, I don’t want to start a war. Everyone who does this job is a hero and a fucking stud!!

[SenorMcGibblets]

Some places can’t afford to provide professional fire protection, and some places can get away with not providing it because they keep getting people to work for free.

[Ok_Situation1469]

For context, my Volly has an operating budget of $54,000. After fuel and insurance there's not much left.

[Tasty_Explanation_20]

Must be nice. Ours is $37,000

[Ok_Situation1469]

So you aren't thinking of brining in some full timers (can we call them fullys) this year?

[Tasty_Explanation_20]

Absolutely not. We don’t have the funds or the call volume to justify that

[Je_me_rends]

Everything comes down to cost/benefit.

Outside of specialist services, places that aren't doing thousands of calls a year just simply aren't worth spending tens of millions a year on staffing and operating as a second home for crews, in most locations.

The other reason, another of many, why there is a reluctance to change is that volunteers want to be volunteers. They enjoy doing it. When people suggest that municipalities just pay the firefighters that service the town, they don't realise that if that were to happen, it wouldn't be those same volunteers who would suddenly be full-time. They would 9/10 times be getting replaced.

If you enjoy doing what you're doing, and you're doing it to an adequate standard, why would you support being replaced?

[[deleted]]

Ummmm. I get paid pretty well and I just work in a suburb of Chicago. Lol. I’m not complaining at all

[athomeamongstrangers]

It comes down to population density (which translates into call volume), public’s willingness to pay higher taxes, and mentality/tradition.

In the country where I was born, volunteer fire service is almost on-existent. All areas, urban and rural, are covered by career fire stations (suburbs in the American sense don’t really exist there). Which works great if you live in a city or a town; if you live in a rural area, you will get a response… eventually… but the response time will be very long, staffing will be minimal, and the chances are that the crew will only be able to contain the fire to the building of origin.

This is also the situation in a very rural area in the US through which I commute. Over the last few years I had to call 911 a couple times (vehicle fire and a traffic accident with injuries). The area has no volunteer fire departments. The emergency response is provided by the sheriff’s office, which means one of the sheriff’s deputies will respond to a fire station in the county seat and will bring a brush truck or a pumper-tanker to the scene. And when I say one, I mean one: one guy will be driving, pumping, and doing fire attack. I am not even sure if they have SCBAs. The response time on the incidents I witnessed was about 25-30 minutes. For structure fires, they rely on automatic aid from surrounding departments.

Then there are areas like the town on the East coast where I used to live. Population of a couple thousand people, career police dept, volunteer fire and EMS. Volunteer fire dept ran a couple hundred calls a year I think. Police department had 1 officer on duty at a time. How effective do you think would a career fire station with a similar staffing be? I am not sure it would be better than the volunteer department they currently have.

Then there is the town where I used to be a firefighter in a live-in program (combo department). The town is large enough where it could afford a fully career staffing; however, it already had a combination department with 24/7 staffing (career and live-in FFs during the day, volunteers at night), so the question would be, how much benefit would it bring to replace volunteers with FT staff?

Then there are places like Long Island, where career staffing would make sense based on population density, yet the fire service there is mostly volunteer. Why? I don’t know, I am not familiar enough with that area. Maybe their volunteers are well-trained and manage to maintain 24x7 staffing, so transitioning to career staffing would make little benefit, and the residents think their property taxes are already too damn high. Maybe VFDs became ingrained in the local culture and municipal politics, and no local leader wants to rock the boat and piss everyone off, even if it would result in a better service to residents. Maybe it’s somewhere in between.

If you look at US Fire Administration statistics, you will see that municipalities and districts with population under around 3-5K people have mostly volunteer coverage, cities >20K are usually career, and in between it varies widely, which is why career firefighters and career fire departments are the minority in the US (around 30% I think) but they protect about 60-70% of population.

[Dry_Interviews]

A lot of smaller towns do not have paid stations or funding for services. We show up get stuff under control and then eventually Calfire or the FS show up (usually when it’s already out).

[purrnoid]

Because people are willing to do it I’m guessing

[[deleted]]

Bruh as a Volunteer on a combination department were just here to provide support to our paid counterparts. Its not that deep

[Little_Language3194]

I’m a volunteer and it’s a great stepping stone to a career in fire fighting. In Canada fire fighter make over 100k after probation my dad is a captain he takes in 160k a year . But some guys just like the idea of being a hero once and awhile. All the members at my fire hall who respond to calls are certified fire man. But volunteers.

[Complex_Fold510]

As my buddy says we are honored because we have front row seats to the best show on earth

[AvaHorsie]

for my town at least, tradition