Communities have begun transitioned their fire departments to include more career firefighters as call volumes go up and the number of available volunteers goes down.
In 2020, The National Fire Protection Association reported approximately 676,900 volunteer fire fighters, a six percent decrease from the previous year and the lowest number ever recorded. Since 1984, the same data shows volunteers have decreased by 25 percent, while the U.S. population has grown by 40 percent.
Between 2015 and 2020, development in Cypress-Fairbanks (Cy-Fair), a suburb in Houston, Texas brought an influx of residents and a growing demand for emergency services.
By 2019, call volume had increased to 40,000 a year and the all-volunteer fire department couldn’t keep up.
Recognizing the need for change, the Harris County Emergency Services District 9 board of commissioners, the governing body of the Cy-Fair Fire Department and firefighters began exploring solutions.
The two groups made a plan to convert into an all-career fire department in order to provide adequate service to the community.
In 2021, firefighters formed Cy-Fair Local 5248 to ensure they had a seat at the table as expansion plans moved forward.
Christopher Filmore, Cy-Fair IAFF Local 5249’s President said: “We worked together to develop a 10-year department expansion plan to add career firefighters and more fire stations.
“Today, we have 350 full-time fire fighters and about 75 volunteers and 35 part-timers.”
“Responding directly out of the fire houses means we can get to each emergency faster,” said Filmore.
“And that means we can often contain the fires to the rooms they started in instead of arriving to a structure that is already fully involved.”
The National Volunteer Fire Council reports that the number of volunteer firefighters decreased from nearly 898,000 in 1984 to around 677,000 in 2020, indicating a decline over the decades.
Maumee in Ohio and Bloomington in Minnesota also experienced a similar reduction in volunteer firefighters.
Sam Johnson, President of Maumee IAFF Local 4536 commented: “Simply put, we did not have enough fire fighters and paramedics to respond to the number of calls coming in.”
“We needed to be able to deliver around-the-clock coverage. The paid-on-call model was no longer meeting the needs of our citizens.”
Kristopher Kauffman, President of Bloomington Local 5484 echoed Sam Johnson’s sentiment: “People don’t work a mile or two from home anymore and cannot leave their regular jobs to go fight a fire.
“The amount of training that is necessary to do the job is a big commitment that many are not ready to make.”
Areas in Texas, Ohio and Minnesota have discussed the impact of the decreased amount of volunteer firefighters.
Sam Johnson, President of Maumee Local 4536 in Ohio said that simply put, the department did not have enough firefighters and paramedics to respond to the number of calls coming in.
