Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jeff Pearson on March 9, 2009 at 9:54pm

Biggest challenge is getting members to show up at ALL calls. To many people saying its just a minor accident and "those" guys can handle it. We've had MVA'S with only 4 of us responding. Ended up needing extrication. Makes it hard to follow procedure and do it in a timely manner. Then a structure fire in the village and we have 14 members there. Pisses me off.

Permalink Reply by Robert C. Baker on March 9, 2009 at 10:48pm

Greetings Jeremy, I belong to a small dept. in w/pa. very rural, but very active. I belive manpower is our biggest problem these days. It's getting increasingly harder to crew a truck now day or night with firefighters. And that goes back to training, we can't get people in f/f1, ff/2 and all the other required training anymore, these guy's and gals have other lives too live as well. We now have a training committee and training officer and I think that is going really well but it also allows for both older and younger members to train together, more often thru in-station training. It also helps when the training officer is trained to fire inst. I and II as well as certified by the state.
Another big help is having the fire chief on the same sheet as the training officer, we list our training in 3mo.blocks post so all can see and even let the members put training requests in a box which the training committee reviews on a monthly basis and if the training is relevent it goes on the next training schedule. As far as overcoming the manpower thing we just keep trying to recruit new members and rely on our jr.firefighters to recruit friends from the high school. So much for manpower and training, Good luck, and stay safe. BB

Permalink Reply by Billy B Casteel JR on March 10, 2009 at 1:33am

One of the biggest problem I had on a small department was having a crew to work that call. It was hard only having 7 people on the drepartment. Then only having about four people showing up to calls is hard.

Permalink Reply by chris carillo on March 14, 2009 at 10:10pm

hi everyone i belong to a dept. on the east end of long island NY, we are a seasonal town with around a hundred members and our biggest problem is recruitment, young men and woman that are college age generally go out of town for a few years. we recently started a juniors program but most of them leave for school as well

Permalink Reply by Cody Collopy on March 14, 2009 at 10:42pm

Recruitment and retention is becoming a problem for volunteer departments of all sizes. I work for a combination paid/volunteer department in Northern Greenville County in SC, and we're faced with the same issues. Check out our web-site at www.gmfd.net to see our staffing. I thank God every day for the volunteers we do have. I wish you guys the very best of luck.

Permalink Reply by Marty D. Ross on March 21, 2009 at 1:11pm

i think that our biggest challenge might be, We look like a big department but we are still a small group. We have about 40 members, 7 are cadets. We also have some nice equipment, most of it we built. A nice new station that is very large and we find new things to do in it every week. So we need to act like we are a big time department? I don't think so!!!

Permalink Reply by john houghton on March 23, 2009 at 7:25pm

One of the biggest challanges is finding new members

Permalink Reply by Keggster on March 28, 2009 at 1:51am

When you figure that little trick out, let us all know. I'm sure there are alot of depts like that, big and small.

Permalink Reply by Mark Klaene on March 29, 2009 at 2:54pm

dedicated members-- those willing to get all of the initial training, and then continue with that training on a regular basis

I figure I am 7 members short of preferred staffing , I have a few members that will retire shortly due to age and as a bedroom community I need at least 4 more available during the day.

Permalink Reply by Tim Wood on March 31, 2009 at 5:20pm

gettin everyone to participatein the PR,Fundraising ,day to day operations everybody wants to fight the fire no one wants to run the business. Just the same people all the time and it gets frustrating as chief.

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