In general, volunteer departments are in rural areas where paid fire departments are not needed, or where they can’t afford one. If you look at a map of the U.S., you’ll quickly see why we appear to have such a large volunteer force. Things are different from department to department, but in many (most?) cases, these departments would not have a staffed station. If a call comes in, the volunteers carry radios around with them and they meet where the call is located (usually one or two will go to the station first to get the engine, or it’s possible someone might bring the engine home). Can you imagine the reponse times in an urban/suburban setting?[/quote]
I don’t know much about this but I thought a lot of volunteer departments had a fire station and folks just volunteered for one night per week (or every two weeks) but stayed in the station for that night or two. So, it’s like a full-time station perpetually staffed by part-timers.
[quote=CA renter]
In urban/suburban areas, if there is a volunteer component to a paid department, it would be used for training new recruits. Of course, the promise/hope of a job in the paid force is the incentive that makes these kids work for “free” (it still costs the department WRT administrative and training costs, equipment, insurance, etc.). If they don’t think the volunteer experience will land them a job, or significantly increase their chances, I guarantee you there would be precious few full-time volunteers, if any (and the ones who would volunteer F/T are the weird “groupie” types that are actually very dangerous — nobody wants to hire those).[/quote]
That makes sense but if 73% of all fire fighters are indeed volunteers and we know that a huge proportion of the total population in the U.S. is in urban areas, then there must be a lot of volunteers in some major metropolitan areas as well. I agree that the rural model doesn’t translate perfectly to the urban model, but clearly a lot of folks are willing to do this work on a very part-time basis for free. In my view, we should figure out how to use these folks.[/quote]
As to the first part, I stated that things are different from department to department. I’ve seen and heard of different models, and it would depend very much on call volume and staffing power. In the most rural areas (with the possible exception of places with very high fire dangers, perhaps?), my guess is that most of the stations are not manned full-time. If you read the article in the following link, it looks like these OC volunteers respond by radio (no F/T staffing).
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While looking around for more info on volunteer departments, I just happened to come across this. Of course, they are blaming the unions for the volunteers’ poor performance! (Isn’t it ALWAYS the union’s fault? /sarcasm)
Supporters and critics of the reserve program seem to agree on one thing: performance at some of the reserve stations is weak. Critics are pushing to an end to the program while backers hope to revamp the existing system.
Of the stations that could be cut during Thursday’s meeting, Midway City boasts the best volunteer performance in the first six months of 2010. The 13 volunteers there responded to 51 percent of 156 calls the station received. Station 24 in Mission Viejo — with 16 volunteers — responded to less than half of its 283 calls.
Other stations fared far worse: Station 23 volunteers in Villa Park managed to respond to one of the 59 calls they were dispatched to.
“There’s no question, the numbers stink,” said Brad Reese, a Villa Park councilmember and member of the OCFA board who supports the reserve program.
Other stations, however, such as Emerald Bay and Modjeska Canyon have responded to more than 90 percent of their calls.
It needs to be said because there will be some people who still don’t get it, professional firefighters respond to 100% of their calls. Quite frankly, even I’m surprised at these stats. That’s scary, IMHO.
