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NEEDING HELP
I know this has been brought up lord only knows how many times but I thought i'd give it a try and see what kind of advice I get. I'm a Lieutenant for a small small volunteer department that handles about 300 calls a year give or take. The issue i'm having is out of our 40 members we have the same problem most of us do, the burned out 15 that handle every call day or night. I'm just at a loss as to how to get my members active or bring in new people that want to help the community they live in. Any advice or ideas would be fantasic!!
Thanks
Thanks
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Lt.leatherhead on
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Thank you very much Ed, its been pretty hard trying to figure this out. I understand what your saying totally however I finally just got my last shipment of new PPE in so there are two members now that don't have new gear, one of my line firefighters and myself. Tuesday night will be yet another one of our second tuesday fire training nights where we have some quick classroom fun then out to get dirty. this week is a county wide disaster drill at a local college. The only thing I can think of might be that a 13 out of the 15 run out of my station, station two. Its getting to the point that if you live ten miles away and run out of station one your still gonna make first truck. I dont know if its an issue of people just being ok with station two handling everything or what. but thank you very much and i'll put some thought into what you've said.
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Thank you both!
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Permalink Reply by Capt.Alex Arnold on
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I can share in those feelings. We have 3 stations to man has volunteers. We currently carry 26 members on our roster. I would say 18 of the 26 volunteers are regular responders. At one time we had almost 40 members. Even at that number it was still about 18 regular responders. Ed and Tiger both have some great ideas. It definitly is a smoother running group with a smaller roster. We are very effective and efficient in what we do. I would like to say one thing though. Capping your roster can bring one bad thing, if you deny a prespective member because you are "at your member limits" you may loose the potential of an excellent volunteer. The volunteer fire service is one of the most difficult "proffessions" to get R/R. Don't let the good ones get away, in recruitment.
Be Safe and learn something new today.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Bearce on
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I agree with Ed. I myself was recently on a department that ran 1500+ calls a year. This includes EMS assists. And the dept consisted of about 15 members. This meant that I was a very active member generally on the first out engine.
I year ago I moved to a rural area and joined a smaller rural department. I now live in the country which delays me to the call. On a good stucture I can arrive to the station and there will be now apparatus available. This is generally due to the units going out with one or two qualified personnel.
This in turn leaves me to sitting at the station and waiting for another alarm to go out. With my 16+ years of experience and training I feel is being wasted. I have started to resort to responding t the station grabbing my gear and responding POV.
It has also been mentioned a few times that the apparatus should be staffed with qualified personnel first and an engine company should not consist of less than three personnel if they know others are responding. We utilize two way radios instead of pagers so everyone is aware of who is responding.
My 2 cents...
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Thanks to all, I suppose i'll throw out some of these ideas to the dig boss men and see what they think. I would love to add another fifteen like the ones i've got now! Good group of guys that can get the job done and get it done darn good. Thanks again
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Permalink Reply by anne potter on
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I agree with you .. A dept that is only about 15 miles form us have a waiting list to get in... they only allow so many in and they have Co 's with so many members in each co. So if a member leaves a certain Co one can transfer to that or appilcations are looked..This way you have people who want to fight fire... Still you will have your on or two that don't show,but this dept has rules.. So many meeting s and so on first you get a letter stating hey need to lets us know whats up then a suspension then out... They always have people on the waiting list who are glad to just be on the list...
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