Communities are battling the problems of fewer volunteers and more fire calls
By Abe Winter
Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska)
Copyright 2007 The Omaha World-Herald Company
OMAHA, Neb. — Want to be a volunteer firefighter or emergency medical technician?
Fewer people are saying yes to that question.
“Volunteer fire departments across the nation are struggling with the decline of volunteers, and Ralston is feeling the same trouble,” said Ralston Fire Chief Kyle Ienn. “It’s been a problem for quite a few years.”
A $229,320 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will assist Ralston and other area volunteer fire departments with recruitment and retention of members.
Money from the grant, which is spread over four years, has been used to hire a part-time marketing officer, Terry Kennedy.
“The task will be to promote volunteer fire departments, promote the need, stress the benefit of helping people in need and the personal satisfaction of helping,” Ienn said.
Incentives also will be offered to help new and existing volunteers pay for college, department training, physicals and for modest retirement awards.
The grant is being administered by the Ralston department, which has seen its number of volunteers drop even as the number of calls it handles has increased.
“We are down to 16 members, which enables us to handle the volume of calls we are taking, but we are at a point where we need to recruit more volunteers,” Ienn said.
There were almost 50 members in the department when Ienn joined it 17 years ago. Then, the department responded to an average of 250 calls per year. Now it responds to more than 600.
“We’re responding to more than double the amount of calls with less than half the number of volunteers, so it’s put a bigger strain on our volunteers,” Ienn said. “It definitely makes a difference. And the public expects more from us, too.”
Kennedy’s task goes beyond the needs of Ralston.
“Whatever project he ends up doing will be geared toward recruiting firefighters in the entire area,” Ienn said, then listed such volunteer departments as La Vista, Bellevue, Springfield, Gretna, Boys Town, Irvington, Waterloo, Valley, Bennington and Ponca Hills that could benefit from the grant.
“We all work together, so we can use this FEMA grant to help other volunteer fire departments,” Ienn said.
Some area departments have had success lately in adding volunteers but still struggle with having enough personnel to handle an increasing number of calls.
The Irvington Volunteer Fire Department has increased its membership from 22 to 30 in the last 18 months. Still, Fire Chief Nolan Paulsen said he would like to bump that number to 35, where it was in 1997.
New members signed on after attending open houses or visiting the department’s Web site, Paulsen said. He also said the calls to the department have increased to about 600 per year after having been at 350 in 2000.
The La Vista Volunteer Fire Department has seen a significant jump from 31 volunteers in 1996 to 49 today. The numbers are needed, spokeswoman Melanie Smith said, because the number of calls has increased from 493 in 1996 to 698 in 2006.
“We had a dip in (volunteer) numbers in the late 1990s, but we’re keeping very active in our recruiting,” Smith said. “Most of the people who join know somebody in the department, so a lot of it is word of mouth.”
In Bellevue, the numbers have been constant of late, generally between 140 and 150, spokesman Jack Syphers said. The actual number today is 146, said Bellevue Fire Chief Dale Tedder.
However, a recent EMT/firefighter class had only four sign up. Usually, Tedder said, between 10 and 12 sign on.
Bellevue officials last week testified against a legislative bill that would have required the city to switch from a volunteer to a paid fire department. The Urban Affairs Committee killed the bill. The city, the state’s third largest, has said it will likely switch someday, but has too many financial difficulties to do so right now.
Meanwhile, Tedder said he’d like to keep adding volunteers to the department because the number of calls is constantly increasing. The 2006 totals show 562 fire calls and 2,195 rescue calls. The number of fire calls, he said, is down from 764 in 2000 because of an aggressive fire prevention campaign.
But, because of tremendous growth in population and housing, the number of rescue calls is soaring.
By the numbers
30,436 Number of fire departments in the United States
22,394 Number of all-volunteer fire departments in the United States
1,752 Number of totally full-time fire departments in the United States (includes Omaha and Council Bluffs)
Sources: National Fire Protection Association and National Volunteer Fire Council