There was a time when volunteer firehouses across this great country had waiting lists for membership. It was such an honor to be a part of the community’s “winning team” that people would line up trying to join. Unfortunately, those days seem to be all but gone. Driving around many towns, it’s not uncommon to see signs announcing, “Firefighters Wanted.”
There are a number of factors contributing to the dwindling ranks of our once plentiful membership. Some are changes reflected in the shifts in society over the years. Others are felt more specifically in the fire service because of the nature of our work.
Perhaps the single greatest issue is the fact that most of us now need two jobs to make ends meet. The days of working 9 to 5, coming home, taking care of your responsibilities and then devoting time to the firehouse are just about gone.
In general, our daily lives are broken into thirds; we sleep a third of the day, work a third of the day, and get everything else handled in the other third. In this day and age, there is nothing in our lives more important then family. Children today have a wider array of recreational opportunities then my contemporaries and I had growing up, and they demand our attention and participation as parents. Also, with more dual-income families than in previous generations, babysitting duties must be shared. These factors of modern family life have had a significant impact on the volunteer fire service. There simply are not enough hours in the day to add a fourth third.
Another key factor is increased competition and a greater need for education. When I graduated high school, it was possible to chart a course for your life that did not include a college education. Having one opened more doors for you, but was not required. A civil service exam was all that stood between you and a career.
Lifelong careers
This track does not exist anymore. Without college, you simply can’t get some of the more sought after jobs in fire and law enforcement. What does this mean? It means that, for the most part, high school graduates with aspirations toward lifelong careers in the fire and other services have to go to college in order to make it happen.
Another factor is the clear cut generational differences between old school firefighters and new recruits. I have heard the argument from both sides about the dedication (or lack thereof) of some of our younger firefighters. As in a marriage, you can’t make a person be someone they’re not. The youth of today are much more “streetwise"; they get this from the tremendous exposure they have to the outside world.
When I was growing up, my family was fortunate enough to have access to seven channels on our television set. Now we have hundreds of channels, and when you add the Internet into the mix, our kids are given access to more information and entertainment than we ever dreamed of.
With this atmosphere of sensory input, it shouldn’t be a mystery why incoming firefighters are sometimes more impatient and easily distracted. They’ve been conditioned to process information in a different way than we were.
I have heard senior guys across the country complain that the kids today are “not dedicated,” “uninterested” and “lazy.” I remember similar conversations among the old guard when I was one of the kids coming up in the fire service. The complaints raised were similar. The difference is that back then, the fire service was not in a state of membership flux, so the “old ways” worked. Well, it’s not your father’s fire service anymore.
Positive impact
There is a six-letter word that has always seemed to plague the fire service: “change.” When the SCBA was first introduced into the fire service, it was met with resistance. When mandatory annual physicals were first instituted, they were met with resistance. Despite initial complaints, both of these changes have had an extremely positive impact on what we love to do. These examples don’t stand-alone; the history of the fire service has seen many such innovations that were at first a source of controversy, only to become essential components to our day-to-day lives.
We do not enjoy some of the luxuries that other volunteer organizations do when they have a membership problem. For one, we can get killed doing our volunteer work, a problem not shared by other civic and community groups.
We need to analyze what is going on out there and adjust our practices to be conducive to the cause. The fire service is made up of a very enterprising talented breed, and I am confident that we can do it.
We need to adapt to our environment in order to address the changes we are all experiencing. One interesting approach was presented to me by one of our captains, who had some young firefighters who would sometimes leave the firehouse to play video games at a friend’s home.
He put in a requisition to purchase a games system, which I thought was a great idea. The folks in purchasing didn’t initially concur as this was not the usual equipment purchase order they were used to getting from us. But when I explained the dilemma of this captain, they approved the purchase. With the games system in place, the captain not only kept the “troops” in the firehouse, but also picked up some of their friends as members. This clearly was thinking outside the box, something we need to do and can do to secure our future.
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