Tag Archives: fire

Great reasons to involve LOCAL volunteer firefighters

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It seems that, per the union for professional firefighters stance against volunteers in firefighting or any emergency response roles, a lot of fire stations are phasing out volunteers in these frontline roles. I’m seeing more and more stations across the USA scaling back the involvement and/or role of volunteers, allowing volunteers only in non-emergency-response roles, if at all: rolling hoses and cleaning equipment after a call, serving food and drinks to career firefighters at or after a call, staffing fundraising events, setting up for or cleaning up after events, etc. Those support roles to frontline responders are super important, and many volunteers are happy to fill them. But there are a lot of other people that want to volunteer in emergency response roles, and they are willing to go through extensive training, right alongside career firefighters, to do it. Unfortunately, there seem to be less and less opportunities for such people.

In addition, I’m also seeing fire stations that are still involving volunteers in first responder roles recruiting for volunteers only or primarily among people that want to become career firefighters and that see volunteer firefighting as a path to that. As with career firefighters, such volunteers are often from outside the town or city where they will serve, maybe far outside. They don’t stick around for long, because they are looking for a paid job: they leave the station after just a year or two for paid work elsewhere. That means such a fire station is forever recruiting and training volunteers to replace those that leave.

Career firefighters are not better than volunteer firefighters, volunteer firefighters are not better than career firefighters, and neither should be a threat to the other. Rather, these two kinds of first responders, working side-by-side, can make emergency management and risk prevention all the more powerful than just one kind or the other staffing a station.

Here are great reasons to recruit and involve local volunteer firefighters, even if a station is partially or primarily staffed by career firefighters, reasons that shouldn’t feel threatening to career firefighters:

  • Local volunteers live in the community or neighborhood, and that means they will often know things about residents, businesses, streets and locations that career firefighters that don’t live in the town or area may not know. This can be helpful, even vital, when responding to certain calls.
  • Local volunteers live in the community, and that means they can be more readily available to back up on-duty staff during an emergency than off-duty career firefighters that live outside of the town or city and have to travel several miles, even more than an hour, to staff a station when all the on-shift responders are on a call.
  • Local volunteers represent local community investment in the fire station and local support for career firefighters, many – and sometimes, most – of whom do not live in the community. Local volunteers demonstrate a kind of community endorsement as powerful as financial support.
  • Local volunteers can provide much-needed continuance and knowledge in a fire station with a high turnover of career firefighters.
  • Local volunteers aren’t career firefighters, and those that don’t have career firefighting aspirations can be a more neutral voice when making the case for a maintenance or increase in funding for a fire station or for a new strategy. They do not have a financial or career interest in funding or expansion, for instance, and that makes their voice incredibly powerful when advocating to elected officials and community members that may be voting on such a measure.
  • Local volunteers aren’t career firefighters, and those don’t have career firefighting aspirations can be a more neutral voice when addressing problems and complaints within or about a fire station, since they will not suffer financial consequences from speaking out about issues that need to be addressed. The key here is the phrase can be – does your station empower and encourage local volunteers to provide frank feedback about what they see and experience? Do you have a speak-up culture?
  • Local volunteers may end up serving on a citizen committee that advises government or even run for local office, and having a firefighter advocate in such a role can be greatly beneficial to all firefighting, fire prevention and emergency response in a community.

What are other great reasons to involve local volunteers in fire stations? What other scenarios, beyond fire stations, are good to have volunteers and career professionals working side-by-side? Please share in the comments.

And on a related note, here are four groups of questions every fire station should be asking itself:

  • If we involve career firefighters, how long are they staying, on average? Why are they leaving? Do we need to change how we recruit, manage or support career firefighters to reduce turnover? What are the costs associated with recruiting and training a new career firefighter?
  • If we involve volunteer firefighters in first responder roles, how long are they staying, on average? Why are volunteers leaving? Do we need to change how we recruit, manage or support volunteer firefighters to reduce turnover? What are the costs associated with recruiting and training a new volunteer firefighter?
  • How does the local community perceive the engagement of volunteer firefighters in first responder roles? If our station is scaling back or eliminating volunteers in these roles, how aware is the public of this change, and what are their feelings about it?
  • Does our web site have clear information about why we involve volunteers in emergency response? Are we limiting ourselves to recruiting only those people who have career aspirations and want to volunteer as a pathway to that career, or do we also have language that also encourages local people with no career firefighting aspirations to volunteer?

Also see:

Mission statements for your volunteer engagement
(Saying WHY your organization or department involves volunteers)

New online resources to help recruit volunteer firefighters

Volunteers needed, but are they wanted?

why you can’t find/keep volunteer firefighters

Making certain volunteers feel unwelcomed because of your language

pro vs. volunteer firefighters

Fire station turns away volunteers – & how it could be different

International Association of Fire Fighters is anti-volunteer

Free Manuals on Preparation for Disaster Recovery

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In light of recent events in Japan, someone posted information about this publication on one of the many online groups I’m a part of: a free disaster recovery manual, How to Help Your Community Recover from Disaster: A Manual for Planning and Action available free for download.

[ July 2017 update: the aforementioned links to this resource have been corrected. It was originally published in 2010 at http://www.scra27.org/resources/disasterresources/scra_manual_final5810pdf ]

Chapters cover the steps required to understand the potential effects of disaster, organize the community, assess its needs, make an action plan, choose a strategy or strategies for intervention, reach out to various constituencies, track results, and share lessons learned. This is a USA-focused manual, but it’s easily adapted to a variety of settings.

The 104-page text, published in 2010, is grounded in psychological principles closely linked to disaster recovery. It was created by the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) Task Force on Disaster, Community Readiness, and Recovery Department of Psychology, “a diverse group of researchers, evaluators, and community practitioners.”

One of the sections I like best is Part VI on “Types of Communities and Outreach to Diverse Groups,” which talks about non-obvious communities-within-communities – those who may not be reached by the usual community communication channels. Too often, this type of manual never discusses hard-to-reach individuals and communities within a neighborhood, town or city, like immigrants, people with low-literacy, religious minorities, people who have isolated themselves from neighbors and even the government, and others. Some of these groups are more visible than others, and in thinking about how to address community needs after a disaster, you have to know who makes up your “community.” Unlike many other how-to manuals regarding community work, this manual bluntly discusses the necessity to assess and discuss levels of mistrust among various individuals and groups, to recognize and understand differing cultural beliefs and practices, the necessity to “build authentic human relationships” with a variety of community representatives, and disaster planning for people with disabilities.

(I once asked a fellow aid worker in Afghanistan how our agency was working to reach various under-represented groups in our rural organizing and capacity-building governance work, including women. He replied, “It’s not our job to try to reach those groups. We’re only obligated to work with official leadership. To do otherwise is to not be culturally-respectful.” That comment still burns me.)

A criticism of the document: it mentions spontaneous volunteers, but doesn’t talk about what to do with them or how to respond to them. In disaster situations, the last thing you want are unaffiliated, untrained volunteers handling chainsaws, interacting with or transporting children or other vulnerable people affected by disaster, and engaging in other activities that could, at least, lead to misunderstandings and missteps and, at worst, lead to harm. See this blog on dealing with spontaneous online volunteers, who often overwhelm nonprofit and government offices after a disaster.

People in Aid also has a fantastic primer for organizations who want to develop their own emergency resources for sudden on-set disaster response.

[ July 2017 update: People in Aid is no more! And its wonderful disaster management wiki is gone as well. Luckily, you can still find it by cutting and pasting this URL into archive.org: http://www.peopleinaid.org/interactive/Wikis/MPE/Home ]

Ofcourse, the best preparation for disaster is getting people into disaster-response training programs now, such as through the American Red Cross.

Also see Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters – my own resource which has been rather popular recently (this is a monetized page on my site, so I’ll be donating the money I’ve raised beyond my monthly goal for April to a Japan-focused charity).