How good is voluntery fire service in the USA?

4 comments

1. We have thousands of cities/towns here. Some fire services/departments are great, and inevitably, some are terrible. Usually the terrible ones get replaced with paid fire services or with arrangements that other towns will cover the area.

   I live in a town with a volunteer department. In the US, when we hear “volunteer”, we think of people who give their time for free – like a volunteer working at a homeless shelter, or a volunteer who helps to teach reading at a library.

   Volunteer fire departments aren’t giving their time for free, and that confuses some of us. I learned more about it when they tried to recruit me for my town’s department. They get training, equipment, automobile allowance, cell phone allowance, health insurance, life insurance, and a stipend of at least $18k per year in my town’s department.
   My town is about 5 square miles, a population of about 30,000, and we have 6 fire houses.

   My department seems to do a great job.

2. I’d guess it would depend on the town, I doubt the majority of them are atrociously bad or I’m sure I would have heard of it by now. Most if not all major cities have professional fire fighters, so as a New Yorker I obviously don’t have first hand experience with the voluntary guys.

3. Volunteer firefighter/EMT here. The quality is going to depend on how good that town or village’s people are. Some departments get a lot of good volunteers, others just get people who will put in the bare minimum. Ever since standardizing the firefighter courses (in all but 2 states), the quality of training has gone up though.

4. Depends I’m sure. Pretty much every town that is too small to have career firemen has a voluntary service, and in my experience they are competent enough. We often refer to them as foundation savers though. Not really their fault, it’s just the reality of the situation. We hold a big carnival each year to raise money to support it (they don’t get much in taxes to cover operating costs)

   The few people I know who had a fire that wasn’t easy to put out by homeowners (say a small kitchen fire) completely lost their homes.

   One time in high school during midterm exams, somebody pulled the fire alarm. It was maybe 10-15 degrees out and because legally you can’t go back inside till it was cleared by firefighters. Despite the station being across the street from the school, everyone had to just suck it up and try to stay warm for a half hour until they showed up.