By Jess Eagle
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
CRAFTON, Pa. — In his 57 years as a volunteer firefighter, Roy Hermes has watched the number of volunteers in his department shrink from 72 to 28.
“Guys will walk in now wanting to volunteer, but when we tell them how much training they have to do, they say, ‘No, I don’t have that kind of time,’ and out the door they go,” said Chief Hermes, of the Crafton Volunteer Fire Department.
Volunteer firefighters across Allegheny County tell the same story, and have been for more than 20 years. Despite efforts by the county to attract new members — including offering free college tuition — the numbers have continued to fall.
In an effort to reverse the trend, the Allegheny County Fire Academy, Community College of Allegheny County and County Executive Dan Onorato offered 200 full scholarships to CCAC this year for existing firefighters and new recruits. Twenty-nine people applied. Last year, it was 25.
The scholarship, called FireVEST (Volunteer, Education, Service and Training), requires five years of service to any volunteer department in the county and pays for books and tuition at any CCAC campus for five years, or until the student earns an associate degree.
Applicants must be older than 18 and must maintain a 2.0 GPA. Fifty of the scholarships are for existing firefighters and 150 are for new recruits.
“We surely are using every advantage that we can to market this program,” said Al Wickline, administrator of the Fire Academy. “As to why we’re not getting a whole bunch more [applicants], I’m not quite sure.”
Mr. Onorato couldn’t be reached for comment.
State policy blamed
Many fire chiefs blame unsuccessful recruitment on the state-mandated 166 hours of training, increased time spent on fundraising and a generation of young people who feel disconnected from their communities.
“You got less and less guys doing more work. The guys who are here definitely feel like they’re overworked or overburdened,” said Jim Ulrich, president of the Millvale Borough Fire Department.
Over the past year, the Millvale department received some calls it couldn’t respond to because no volunteers were available, Mr. Ulrich said. Other departments in the county have had the same problem, and others who responded sometimes did so with insufficient numbers.
Many have had to ask neighboring departments for assistance with incidents that, in the past, they could have managed alone.
“In the old days, we could have a house fire and we would handle that fire by ourselves or maybe we’d call one other company to assist. That same house now ... will involve maybe five other companies,” Chief Hermes said.
Manpower also is decreasing because the fire service is aging, said Bob Full, Allegheny County chief of emergency services. The majority of the county’s 8,000 volunteers are older than 30 and outnumber young volunteers by far.
“The advent of women being introduced has helped to offset the trend, but hasn’t stopped the bleeding,” Chief Full said.
Of the 215 fire departments in the county, 205 are entirely volunteer, and four more have a combination of both volunteer and career firefighters.
Altogether, the volunteer departments save the county about $60 million annually, according to the Fire Academy.
Word of mouth works best
Most volunteer departments have to spend so much time fundraising to support themselves and pay for increasingly expensive equipment that they have no time left to recruit new members.
For some, the extent of their recruitment efforts is a “help wanted” sign on the door.
Others, like the Castle Shannon department, have resorted to changing the structure of their department in an effort to stay alive. In the past few years, the department lowered the minimum age for volunteers from 21 to 18 and expanded is boundaries to include volunteers living in the southern part of Pittsburgh.
Chief Bill Reffner of Castle Shannon said none of his recruitment strategies have been more successful than word of mouth, which other chiefs agree has been the best recruitment tool for decades.
Word of mouth still generates enough new members to keep some departments afloat.
A number of young people recently joined the Skyview Volunteer Fire Department in West Mifflin, said Chief Steve Marone, but it wasn’t due to any formal recruitment efforts. Skyview, like other departments, had been experiencing a steady decline in active volunteers.
Multigenerational families in volunteer departments have also dropped off, though they haven’t completely disappeared.
FireVEST scholarship recipient Patrick Brannon, 18, is a new member at Castle Shannon, where his father and three uncles volunteer. He is the fourth generation of his family to volunteer there.
“I grew up there,” he said. “It’s just in my blood.”
Mr. Brannon will major in fire science and take CCAC classes at the South Campus in West Mifflin and the Boyce Campus in Monroeville. He hopes eventually to become a fire investigator or marshal.
Future Firefighters program
Mr. Brannon and fellow scholarship recipient Anthony Altemara, 18, participated in Castle Shannon’s Future Firefighters program for five years before joining the department this spring. They both graduated from Keystone Oaks High School.
The Future Firefighters program, for 12- to 18-year-olds, has brought other recruits to the department as well, Chief Reffner said, but many young people are discouraged by the time dedicated to fundraising at Castle Shannon, which is almost entirely self-sufficient.
The department of 44 volunteers receives no money from the government other than federal grants, which are never guaranteed. Consequently, fundraising is the most time-consuming part of the job.
Though each member also receives the annual $100 tax credit issued by the state to every volunteer firefighter, it isn’t enough, said Chief Reffner.
“The people that are trying to help the fire service out, I don’t think they quite hit the nail yet,” he said. “I thought that we were kind of thrown the bone, but there wasn’t anything left on it.”
The tax credit, which began last year, can’t be filed on joint tax forms, and for some volunteers, the cost to file separately isn’t worth it.
Other than state-mandated worker’s compensation, the tax credit is one of the few benefits some volunteers receive.
Most volunteers in the county also have disability insurance through their departments, but only some also provide life insurance. Few receive retirement benefits.
“I think that one of the keys for departments to keep volunteers, or recruit them in the first place, is to offer some kind of benefits,” said Kimberly Ettinger, director of communications for the National Volunteer Fire Council, based in Greenbelt, Md.
Despite dwindling manpower, departments across the country are receiving more calls each year, and fewer for actual fires. Volunteers are called to clean roadways after vehicle fires, for example.
“We’re becoming the custodians of the road systems because we have to go out and clean the oil and cooling liquid off the roads,” Chief Hermes said.
In addition to recruiting problems, many departments also have existing members who can’t keep up with the increased time requirements and have to leave.
“You mark my words, in the next 10 years, there will be more paid firefighters,” Chief Hermes said.
“They’re going to have to find the money because they’re not going to have any volunteers.”
Copyright 2009 P.G. Publishing Co.