By Josie Huang
Portland Press Herald (Maine)

SCARBOROUGH, Maine — Scarborough's firefighting force is mostly made up of volunteers like Bruce Bell.

He signed on 51 years ago to be part of a team of neighborly types who, like him, get a rush from responding to house fires and accident scenes.

These days, Bell feels more like part of a dying breed.

The number of call members in Scarborough has fallen over the past three decades even as more people moved to town. Their ranks have dwindled to 143, less than half the number in 1980. At the same time, the annual number of service calls has more than tripled, to nearly 3,300 last year.

The declining popularity of the call company is worrying town officials, who have proposed a 10-year plan of adding 42 full-time firefighters to the current in-house staff of 13.

Although he approves of the plan, Bell is saddened by what it says about the health of the call company system.

"I enjoyed it for so many years and I hate to see it die, but the reality is that it's time-dated," said Bell, 67.

Cities such as Portland and South Portland rely on professional firefighters, but call companies serve as the backbone of fire departments for most other towns, giving them an affordable way to man their engines. Volunteer firefighters are paid by the hour, typically $8 to $16, and do not receive benefits like professional firefighters.

They get to the point where they say, 'It's someone else's turn,'... OK, well, there is no one else to pick up the turn.

— Stephen Hinds Bath Fire Chief

For decades, it was a family tradition for men to join their local fire department as a way to give back to the community, said Bath Fire Chief Stephen Hinds, a vice president on the Maine Fire Chiefs board of directors. Many people lived and worked in the same town, and it was easy for them to hear a call coming from the closest fire station. In some mills, a whistle would alert call members to fires.

Then the manufacturing plants started to close, and people began commuting to work in other towns, making it difficult for them to respond to calls.

By the time they got home, they were too busy with their families and other activities to respond to pagers that could go off several times over the course of a night, Hinds said.

Chiefs could not predict how many members would turn up at the scene.

Meanwhile, longtime volunteers were aging and not able to keep up with the tens of hours of training required each year.

"They get to the point where they say, 'It's someone else's turn,'" said Hinds, whose own call company has dwindled from 42 members to 12 in 10 years. "OK, well, there is no one else to pick up the turn."

The problem is especially accentuated in growing communities such as Scarborough, where a boom in retail and residential construction is generating more traffic and people.

Service calls are also rising because there is increased demand for help on issues that people in the past may have addressed on their own by driving to the emergency room, fire officials said.

Fire Chief Michael Thurlow said that call members, along with a program that pays for per-diem firefighters to staff the stations, made it possible for the department to limit the number of professional firefighters it needed to hire over the past 20 years. "But it's just getting to the point where we can't keep up," he said.

Thurlow said Scarborough firefighters have the added challenge of operating six stations covering 54 square miles — more than the territories of Old Orchard Beach, Westbrook and South Portland combined.

Scarborough also has one of the highest property valuations in the state, an estimated $3.5 billion.

In neighboring Gorham, Fire Chief Robert Lefebvre said his town also is experiencing a growth in service calls.

Gorham has added five full-time firefighters in the past year, bringing the full-time staff to 12. The new hires were intended to make up for a drop in call personnel, which declined from 190 to 90 in the past 20 years.

"It's improved our response capability greatly. Most of the time, we're able to handle two calls for service at once," Lefebvre said.

In Scarborough, the 10-year plan to add more firefighters — four new ones a year, after six the first year — has the support of the town manager and the Town Council's finance committee.

The first year would cost about $385,000; subsequent years would require additional, but lesser, amounts, depending on cost-shifting in the department.

"You have to prioritize your needs, which have been more school-based," said council Chairman Jeffrey Messer. "Now it's time for public safety needs to be met."

Bell, the Scarborough call firefighter and retired operations manager for Portland Public Works, approves of the plan for more hires.

After 10 years, there would be 55 staff firefighters — more than most nearby communities and less than South Portland, which has 64.

But Bell wonders how many call members will be around to back up the full-timers.

"In 10 years, I'll be 77 years old," he said. "Do you think I am going to keep on doing this?"

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