Three years into the What Firefighters Want project, surveying firefighters across the United States and Canada, one issue continues to emerge as a pain point: poor agency leadership.
FireRescue1’s 2024 state-of-the-industry survey revealed some alarming statistics related to fire department leadership:
- 76% of respondents reported concerns about their fire department leadership
- 49% indicated that poor agency leadership has a high impact on retention
- 33% have considered leaving their department because of the fire chief
Chief Marc Bashoor offers a sneak peek at a handful of the survey stats.
Download the special report here, and check out more from the What Firefighters Want project here.
Thank you to ImageTrend for sponsoring the project.
What Firefighters Want: More from the Series
Are we training enough — and on the right skills?
Firefighters are increasingly looking beyond their departments for training and development
More than 1,300 firefighters speak up about the quality of training, how training is evaluated and what stands in the way of training more often
New skills require repetition; established skills demand realistic scenarios, sound decisions and measurable performance
The problem isn’t a lack of policies or commitment to safety — it’s the everyday decisions that determine whether standards are upheld or ignored
