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Younger chiefs/officers
Had something happen in our county that raised a few eyebrows and figured I would throw it out and see what the emotions are. Recently, a company in the area elected a 21-year-old chief. I had heard (nothing factual, just strictly hear-say) that some of the members had issues with this. Many of them, of course, being the older and more experienced members. I am not sure if they are upset about being outranked by a younger, less experienced individual or reasonably feel that he is incapable. Just curious to see what everyones opinion is on the situation.
I am a young officer myself. I was 21 when I was appointed to the fire sergeant position. I am confident in my abilities, both on scene and in station, as are the members under me. Our system is designed so the fire chief is elected in December and takes office in January (one year term). The chief then chooses his officers and presents them for approval of the company at the January meeting. The chief of course has his own opinions and courses that he feels an individual should have before being placed in the position. Of course, no chief would place anyone in an officer position if he/she were not comfortable being represented by this individual or having this individual making decisions be it on the fireground or in the station. I would hope that the general membership electing a chief, no matter how that particular stations system is designed, would abide by the same guidelines. I feel that as long as the individual has the knowledge (station workings, incident stabilization, personnel issues, etc.)and maturity and has demonstrated such, then age should not be an issue.
I am a young officer myself. I was 21 when I was appointed to the fire sergeant position. I am confident in my abilities, both on scene and in station, as are the members under me. Our system is designed so the fire chief is elected in December and takes office in January (one year term). The chief then chooses his officers and presents them for approval of the company at the January meeting. The chief of course has his own opinions and courses that he feels an individual should have before being placed in the position. Of course, no chief would place anyone in an officer position if he/she were not comfortable being represented by this individual or having this individual making decisions be it on the fireground or in the station. I would hope that the general membership electing a chief, no matter how that particular stations system is designed, would abide by the same guidelines. I feel that as long as the individual has the knowledge (station workings, incident stabilization, personnel issues, etc.)and maturity and has demonstrated such, then age should not be an issue.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on
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See what I can track down, but to start with (This is based on my home state, Victoria- we have 3 fire services (CFA, MFB, DSE) across the whole state)-
Country Fire Authority (CFA)-
Approximately 58,000 volunteers
1228 brigades
Supported by over 1,100 paid staff, including over 500 career firefighters, providing emergency response and community safety programs throughout Victoria, looking after all regional and country areas throughout Victoria, including Melbourne's rapidly growing outer urban areas , broken down into Regions- http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/locations.htm
About the organization-
http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/whatwedo.htm
Organization Structure- http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/ourstructure/index.htm
It does vary slightly in terms of numbers, but each brigade will have a Captain and then a number of lieutenant's under them- average is probably around 3 or 4. All have different responsibilities such as training, equipment, etc.
Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) Career staff only-
Only respond in Metropolitan Melbourne designated areas-
http://www.mfb.vic.gov.au/default.asp?casid=27
Organization Chart-
http://www.mfb.vic.gov.au/default.asp?casid=185
Rank Structure-
http://www.mfb.vic.gov.au/default.asp?casid=580
Stations located at (Inc. list of trucks at each station)-
http://www.mfb.vic.gov.au/default.asp?casid=188
Each station will generally have a Senior Station Officer, Station Officer and others of various ranks below them.
Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE)-Responsible for all fires on Public Land (National Parks)
Don't know much about them- go to http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenfoe.nsf/Home+Page/DSE+Fire~Home+P...
The interesting things is that each service has a set standard for uniforms- go to any CFA station for example and everyone will look the same (ie: go to the station in the next town- same uniform). Also same rank structures across each station (With different number of Lt's as mentioned above). Vehicles are standard also. A Mk 4 pumper at one station is identical in operation, equipment, layout, etc as the next Mk 4 pumper.
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AIIMS is our equivalent of your NIMS-
http://www.afac.com.au/awsv2/learning/aiims.htm
It is being rolled out nationally across all services....
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Don't get me wrong- it's not a perfect system, but it does work pretty well.
We have no mutual aid agreements- it happens automatically. You call for 4 pumpers, the CAD system despatch the next available 4. You call for Rescue, the CAD system despatches the closest rescue unit/service. You need Lighting, the nearest Lighting unit/service will get despatched.
You have no say over it as the IC. If you require a specific piece of equipment (such as a TIC, then that's a bit different- we don't have an abundance of these unfortunately) then it's a little different...
The good thing as I said earlier though, is that everyone is pretty much (not perfect!) at the same level with minimum skills.
There's also set boundaries for each Station/Unit to cover. Also no double up of services such as Road Crash Rescue- very clear boundaries and training and accreditation systems in palce. this means that $$$ are not being wasted setting up your station as a rescue provider whe nthere is one 5 minutes down the road at another.
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Then add into the mix the SES (This is my old service)
http://www.ses.vic.gov.au
5500 volunteers across 150 units, across 6 Regions.
They say this a typical Unit Structure, but I can tell you it's not!
http://www.ses.vic.gov.au/CA256AEA002F0EC7/page/Who+We+Are-Units-Un...
Generally made up of a Controller and a Deputy Controller, who are supported by an Admin Officer, transport Officer, Training Officer, Logistics Officer, Communications Officer and a Rescue Officer (My old rank)
The Rescue officer then has a number of Team Leaders under them to lead the crews (I had 6) and each team was made of 6 members per crew.
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This comment is in relation to my old Service- the SES. Fire Brigades are also very Rank controlled, like yourselves...
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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I haven't read every response to this, so I apologize if my take has already been covered by someone else.
Generally speaking, I don't think that a 21-year old has enough real-life experience to be a truly qualified chief officer. That goes for life experience as well as fire-rescue experience. However, there are some additional considerations here:
Has anyone considered that maybe the 21-year old chief is the best available person for the job? In this age of shrinking volunteer manpower, it's possible that this company doesn't have anyone better qualified that has the time to do the job. If so, regardless of the new chief's experience or training, he's the best one for the job. That doesn't mean that he's as qualified as he needs to be, but if he's the best available, then he's the best his community can get right now.
Then again, maybe he's from a company that has a junior program and he may already have several years of experience. I was a volly lieutenant at age 20, in a department that had two other lieutenants the same age. All three of us started at 16 or 17 with parental waivers to go interior, all of us had state-certified firefighter, extrication, and officer training, and I was already an EMT at the time. I was in a busy department and had run numerous working fires and extrications, including many as the acting officer. What some of us - particularly those of us who have been career firefighters without volunteering first is that in a volunteer department, whoever gets there first while riding the right seat in effect IS the chief for that fire. I did lots of that in the daytime when we never had an officer above the rank of lieutenant or occasionally a captain present. Interestingly, our volunteer department conducted testing (modeled on civil service) for engineer, lieutenant, and captain and promoted the top candidates from the list. The chiefs were simply appointed, but you had to have experience as a volunteer captain with our department or as at least a lieutenant in a career department to meet the threshold for battalion or assistant chief appointment. It would have been a better system if the chief's positions were appointed as well. Lots of people got disgusted with the double standard between company officer and chief officer appointments and voted with their feet. I know I did, and I was a chief officer the last few years before I left.
In general, I don't have a problem with electing volunteer officers...IF...the officer candidates have to meet threshold qualifications as they did in my old volly department. That way you get officers who are qualified and who have the best chance to keep the volunteers happy and active.
The more global issue here is that for many decades, the United States has gotten its fire services - and often EMS and rescue as well - on the cheap. With payroll and benefits taking up 85 to 90% of the cost of a career department, a volunteer department comes pretty cheap, even if they have state-of-the-art apparatus and a station walpapered with flat panel TVs. Even poorly paid career departments tend to cost a lot more than volunteer department. With the shrinking volly manpower resources in most areas, it's going to force a lot of volly departments to either start hiring career firefighters or to close shop. That puts the onus onto the community. No matter how much some of us want to be firefighters and to help our community, if a community doesn't want to fund a career department and volunteers can't support the department adequately, then that community will face painful, expensive, and potentially deadly choices. A 21-year-old chief may or may not be one of those choices.
For the community with that chief, there's only going to be one way to find out...look at your calendar watch for a while and see what happens.
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The other importnat thing to add Ben (You've raised some good points) is that it's realy (really, really!) important that he knows his limitations and knows when to ask for help and who to ask...
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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on
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Thanks for the links - I did just a little skimming and there is some very interesting reading on the CFA site. In the US it seems an organization like the CFA would do much to create a more unified volunteer fire service. Standards for membership, training, staffing and officer qualifications would be uniform.
I can't imagine what it would take to implement such an organization here. In your country it looks like "Black Friday" in 1939 was the event that triggered the formation of the CFA.
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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Joe:
This country has had its share of "black Fridays".
The only reason the volunteer service in this country can't unify is because there are too many "special interests" that are opposed to it.
Dying isn't a compelling enough reason for us to get our collective sh** together.
IMHO.
TCSS.
Art
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Interestingly enough Joe, it's pretty much the same in every state here in Oz. Different names for the services, but pretty much the same set up in Qld, NSW, VIC, SA, WA, Tas, NT and ACT....
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As I said earlier, it's not a perfect system, but it does work well overall...
I don't think I said it earlier, but to clarify, each State has a State based Police force, State based Ambulance Service, State based Fire (as described previously) and a State based SES.
Uniformity goes a long way to addressing many many issues. There's not multiples of everything and everyone pretty much has very defined roles and responsibilities.
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