Twenty years ago, there would be hundreds of applicants for just a few open positions. Today, a handful of applicants (if we are lucky!) are applying for dozens of open positions. Our pool of potential members is shrinking, which means we must improve how we train new recruits — and how veteran members relate to this younger generation of firefighters.
Is this a new phenomenon? Today’s revered, salty veterans were once probies themselves. What did the salty veterans of their day say about them?
Picture yourself as a new firefighter in 1920 — an entirely different lifestyle, schedule and training regimen. Two years into unionization by the AFL-CIO and IAFF, many departments still weren’t a professional firefighting force. Most were transitioning to motorized fire apparatus, but some departments still had horse-drawn pumpers. (For the history buffs, the last horse-drawn pumper in operation was Engine 18 in Washington, D.C., in 1924.)
Now, imagine stepping into the engine house where the horses are fed and kept. Imagine that you grew up in the city, where your father had some type of labor occupation, and your mother stayed home to care for you and your several siblings. At 18 years old, you’ve joined the local fire department — a mediocre job, but a job, nonetheless. What do you know about horses? And what would the old-timers know about this new machine that transports crews faster than a horse but needs gasoline instead of feed? Imagine that level of change — replacing the horses with a machine — and navigating the transition between younger and older members. The more senior members may have judged the new firefighter for not knowing how to care for the horses, and the younger members may have shaken their heads at the older members for not embracing the motorized option. Clearly this dynamic has been playing out for a very long time.
I’ll fully admit that all I know about horses is that they are large, have four legs and cowboys ride them. The point is, we are often hard on our new people — and likely unfairly so. Some of our new firefighters may lack some life skills, sure – but they have heart. Similarly, some of our veterans may be reluctant to change, from who we are hiring to the all-hazards direction of the fire service.
We’ve always overcome new challenges, from integrating EMS into fire response, answering the call for acts of terror, or training on lithium-ion battery fires. But do we accept these challenges at face value and find solutions, or do we first meet them with skepticism and reluctance? And how is that skepticism affecting firefighter recruitment and retention of younger members who may not feel welcomed because they are seen by veteran firefighters as the human embodiment of change?
How to retain young recruits
I’ve been very fortunate to work with a recruit academy of young prospective firefighters. I’ve seen the extent of their work ethic and, though they lack many fire service skills, they are eager to get to work and quick to learn. Today’s new firefighters need motivation in manual labor, but that is because they’ve grown up in a digital age. They listen to podcasts, watch YouTube shorts and TikTok videos of fires, and crave information. These firefighters question everything because they’ve grown up knowing they can find an answer in seconds — and this is where the fire service is diverging. These younger recruits tend to fear making mistakes, so we must coach them that mistakes in training are part of the building blocks to success, because we cannot make mistakes when it counts. When the tones drop, our citizens expect perfection and deserve 100% of our effort every time.
Bottom line: If we don’t harness these new firefighters quickly, we will lose them. They will either defect to more progressive organizations or they will leave the career field completely. While some veteran firefighters might say “good riddance,” I would counter that if we aren’t recruiting and retaining, then we are one generation away from losing the fire service completely. Like the military, if we aren’t filling our ranks with new blood, who will staff the trucks when all of us are retired? We must cultivate the new generation, grow them, mold them and set them up for success.
It takes patience and grace to mentor a new probationary firefighter. It takes courage to lead someone along the right path, versus berating them for not knowing what they don’t know. Ignorance is common with new firefighters — they simply do not know how the job works. But as is the case for all of us, we don’t know what we don’t know. It’s up to us to train them, teach them, coach them, support them and correct them. Otherwise, the legacies that we have spent our careers developing will be gone. We need them to know how to search, how to stretch lines, how to mask up quickly, deploy ladders and be compassionate. They must understand that they are public servants and serve the citizens above themselves. They must witness good officers and emulate their traits, so when it’s time to promote, they maintain the same traits and traditions as us.
Embrace fresh-faced new recruits with enthusiasm
Public safety is struggling to recruit, and most of us simply don’t have the numbers of decades past. I don’t have a solution to the complex problem of recruitment and retention, but I do believe that if the fire service continues to function the same as in the past, we are doomed to fail. The fire service must adopt and change our training, not to lower the bar but to elevate our standards so that we prepare new firefighters for the current realities of the job. In their growth, we must show compassion, patience and grace, or else we won’t have anyone to train.
Like it or not, nobody else is coming to preserve the fire service — it’s up to us to teach, train, mentor, educate, correct and propel the new generation of firefighters forward to allow our communities to survive and thrive. Or, we can complain and criticize as keyboard warriors when we see an engine company mess up the stretch, or a ladder company look like buffoons when it matters most, and ultimately drive away eager, mistake-averse probies. The choice is ours.
The new kids want to learn, they just don’t know how — but we can compassionately teach them. I’ve seen it firsthand, and it does work.
Now, who is with me?
