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Volunteer firefighters get harder to find
(by Joan Demirjian - December 23, 2009)
Volunteer firefighters get harder to find
By JOAN DEMIRJIAN
As Russell Township Trustees consider a request to hire another on-call paramedic for nighttime hours, they are faced with the reality that the future of volunteer fire service is changing.
Russell Fire Chief John Frazier asked trustees last week to consider his proposal to pay a second paramedic for the evening and early morning hours.
"Trying to run a volunteer department is difficult," Mr. Frazier said.
The department has one full-time paid person at the station during the day and paid part-time staffers, with a total of four on duty.
However, from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., there is only one paramedic who is paid to be on call and respond directly to the scene. The department depends on additional volunteers to respond, driving fire and rescue vehicles.
Mr. Frazier said the department would like to pay for another paramedic to be on call at night, providing two paramedics on call during the evening and early morning hours.
The current paramedic is on call with a vehicle, and can be at home or at the station, giving some flexibility to the nighttime position, Mr. Frazier said.
It is a stop-gap measure as the department goes into the future, he said.
Trustee James Mueller said he looked over the staffing, and, while there is a need to keep down costs, they should look at adding a full-time person to be at the station for the nighttime shift. It would alleviate the need to have another paramedic on call, he said.
However, trustee Kristina Port said hiring another full-time person at this time would be an added expense for the department, and she would be reluctant to that at this time.
Mr. Frazier said the department loses people to other departments that pay their volunteers. "They'd rather work where they get paid." He said paying attracts volunteers.
Township Fiscal Officer Geraldine Heck said the department is OK with finances to 2011, "but I don't know about 2012."
Trustee James Dickinson said, "We know we're on borrowed time with a volunteer fire department. The demographics have changed. We used to be a farming community, and it's harder now to attract local firefighters."
It is a fact of life, and the township has to address it, he said. Paying another on-call paramedic is one way to do that, and the money is there to pay it, he said. "It is a necessary step," Mr. Dickinson said. It is becoming "tougher and tougher to keep volunteer fire departments."
In a suburban community, such as Russell, where people go outside the community each day to their jobs, it is the reality of volunteer departments, which rely on people close at hand to respond to a call, he said.
The idea of paying those who respond to a call is a way of retaining volunteers, Mr. Dickinson said. Other local volunteer departments have been paying responders, he said.
He said they need to look at the pros and cons of hiring another full-time person for the evening shift.
Mr. Frazier is to bring back information on the costs at the January trustees meeting.
He said the situation is not unique to Russell. "Volunteering is on the decline across the country," he said.
At the same time, the department is seeing a higher volume of calls and a greater demand for ambulance service, he said.
Volunteers are away on jobs, outside the township, Mr. Frazier said. That trend prompted the decision several years ago to staff the station with one full-time person and three part-timers, he said.
Other departments in the area are paying staff to be on station for calls. The number of calls has a lot to do with the decisions being made, Mr. Frazier said.
The majority of the calls are for emergency medical technicians, so they have extensive training. That is difficult to do for volunteers who have full-time jobs elsewhere, he said.
"Our chief has done an extremely good job of trying to be sure there is someone to respond 24 hours, seven days a week," Mr. Mueller said.
He said he believes they should be thinking of eventually paying a paramedic to be at the station at night full time. "It's going to have implications," Mr. Mueller said of the costs, "but we have to do it."
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