Posted on 04/26/2019 3:56:33 AM PDT by knarf
If a small town has a need for a fire department, why is it more often than not a volunteer fire department ?
Should't the same taxes that paid fire departments operate from serve the smaller community ?
It shouldn’t be hard to find the house on that one road...
A lot of volunteer fire departments in Iowa used to double as social clubs that consumed a lot of alcohol and raised the local divorce rate. They still tend to be "clubby," but with creeping FEMA-zation, they are increasingly more regimented and regulated, as well as "credentialized" to FedGov standards.
(The Third Reich nationalized fire departments into the Feuerwehr. Not a great precedent.)
You must have moved from a city.
Are asking if a town shouldn’t leech off a larger town for fire services? Like the way churches get for free the same fire and police services everyone else has to pay for?
well, you can’t have a 4th of July parade without fire engines so that’s why we have volunteer fire depts
Interesting arguments here. I’ve always wondered about how fire departments are treated as a kind of bastard child in government and thought a lot had to do with how they were originally formed. The early NYC fire departments were borderline criminal.
I appreciate the arguments of the expense of paying a lot of money for sleepers so think the problem there is unionization.
However consider the military. That too is something that is quite expensive that you hopefully don’t need to use. In that vein I’m inclined towards having more professional departments as I like having the military available too.
Then DON’T volunteer. There are people in every town who love being firefighters. Unless you live in a town that requires all healthy males to belong to the volunteer fire department. ( I remember back in the 50s, my mother’s cousin in a little resort town who was required and received a ‘fine’ for not showing up)
The guys in my town love doing it. Love the camaraderie, the parades and the beer.
Not for me but thank goodness these guys exist.
Most municipal governments are funded by either sales taxes or property - based taxes. Small towns generally don’t have the tax base necessary to fund fully paid “professional” public services. As construction methods and sprinkler systems have evolved, most large municipal fire departments have become emergency medical departments that also put out fires. There are cheaper ways to provide emergency medical services by contracting with private ambulance companies. So the number of fire responses doesn’t really justify 24/7 live-in union firefighters.
There are also, incidentally, a few locales where firefighting is provided by private agencies, and residents pay a yearly membership fee if they want the big trucks to show up when needed.
Also, in the middle range, paid/volunteer departments are common, with one firefighter at the station, and volunteers providing extra manpower as needed.
A lot of small departments are special districts, funded by a fire suppression-specific tax on local property owners. Those local districts are often the main political entity for the community. I’m familiar with a small district that contracted with the neighboring municipal government department to provide all their services, yet regularly voted to maintain the district because it was the seat of representative government for their area.
volunteer firemen are good Samaritans, and that, is also a long-term investment - of the spiritual kind. :)
volunteer floor moppers, eh, not so much.
Gives a bunch of people a chance to get out of the house, pull the big red ruck out of the bay and wash it and lets some put a blue flashing light on their Pic-Em Up and blast around town.
We had to E911 my deceased Maw one time and the EMS and fire showed up. All volunteer. These 2 kids came in the house in there firefighting gear and were standing around doing zilch and then began looking around(200 year old house).
I kicked them out
😎
“It shouldn’t be hard to find the house on that one road...”
You would think so; however most all homes are on stilts and are wood construction. They go up pretty fast and the usual wind does not help.
Volunteer departments are cheaper to operate, get people who are interested, in not outright enthusiastic, about the job, and who probably have a vested self-interest in maintaining the community.
We trained a *lot* more than we actually responded.
95% of all of our calls were traffic accidents--and we usually got on scene before any ambulances showed up. That means the EMTs in our department were providing medical services while waiting for paramedics.
I am a *former* volunteer because I got old enough that I couldn't handle some of the tasks that were required of me to maintain the safety of my fellow firefighters. I believed it better I quit and let some younger bodies take my place.
While I wouldn't force it on anyone, I do believe that everyone should put in some time volunteering for the fire department, ambulance service, etc. It will open your eyes as to what is actually going on in your neighborhoods.
I know. I was just joking about a single point of potential fires. The stilts plus wind is essentially how one would build a fire...
So they can save foundations cheaper than a full time department?
It could be done the way it was done in Charleston SC many years back. There were several fire-fighting “businesses”. You chose one and paid them “premiums”. The company would affix a plaque to your home/business showing your property was under their protection. If your property caught fire and a fire truck from an opposing fire protection business rolled up and didn’t see their plaque, they let your property burn.
“Retired” VFD here. After 9/11, I joined our local rural VFD. In my mid-40’s at the time, too old to sign up in the military but wanted to do SOMETHING. If I recall, more than 50% of firefighters in the U.S. are volunteers. It’s a great example of the spirit of what made America great: that do it yourself, rugged individual mindset. It’s a win-win for the community. Yeah, there’s chili suppers, beer drinking and farting contests. But when that pager goes off at 1:00 AM, adrenaline kicks in and you just want to kick fire’s ass, pry a broken body from a mangled car, or perform CPR to a neighbor. It’s quite the rush during the event, and the sense of pride and accomplishment afterwards is just awesome.
I plan to retire from my real job in a few years, and you can bet I’ll be back at the station, getting up to speed on training and wearing the pager.
“I appreciate the arguments of the expense of paying a lot of money for sleepers so think the problem there is unionization”
So leave unions out of it. Would you pay what you call “sleepers” at all, and if so, how would you score their jobs?
If a sleeper ever got called out and carried you out of your burning house, would you pay a bonus, or is that included in your base rate?
Full disclosure: my B-I-L is an urban, unionized fire captain.
That is, he’s a unionized fire captain when he is not wearing the green in Afghanistan.
Most municipal firefighter’s unions are also quite active in local politics, which has a direct impact on their salaries and pension benefits.
As departments have evolved due to the reduction in structure fires, many have quickly adopted the role of first response medical aid providers. It’s a justification for the 24/7 staffing, and it’s a relatively cheap service to provide when you have few personnel costs and can get reimbursement from medical insurers.
Almost all discussions about cost saving come down to the realization that you can get other employees to do ancillary fire department tasks, but when you do get the 3 am factory fire, you need specialists, you need enough of them, and you need them close enough that they can arrive while the walls are still standing. The discussion usually comes down to finding ways to make them useful in other ways while they’re waiting for a fire call.
A couple of decades ago, one municipality tried combining fire and police departments. It wasn’t successful for a number of reasons, including the fact that there was nobody available to direct traffic and hold back the crowds at the fire. But the big issue was cultural differences. Cop work frequently involves skills like those of a used car salesman, firefighters make their living by doing construction... backwards.
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