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Officers at Volunteer Fire Companies
Last night we had our election nominations meeting for 2011. It's a challenge. We are running out of people to fill these positions.Is this true across the board? Are other companies finding the same thing?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by William Mccauley (Bill) on
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we did same last night at our station .Its hard to get people t ovolunteer .We have a lot of young people n our station and hey do every thing they can to keep the older members out of office .Do not get me wrong its nice to have the young guys but they do not care about history of a station and some bend over backwards to kiss but with the paid staff we have now in the county
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Permalink Reply by Cody Scott on
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Mike I agree whole heartly with yout. We see it more and more in todays recruits that are looking to just have the title and unwilling to put forth the time and dedication it takes. Rich my advice is to maybe have anyone that is interested or unsure if they can/want the duties of officer to sit and have a chat with the current Co. Officers. about the position and its duties. Best of luck to all of ya and be safe.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on
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Its a challenge...either people are not qualified or the ones that are don't want the job.....
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Permalink Reply by James R. Briggs on
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Chief, AC and 3 Captains
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Permalink Reply by Jason McMillian on
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I think the cheif should have a say so in the officers that he or she is going to be workin with, but i also think the firefighters should have a say so in the issue too because they are workin beside them. Either way they need to have the training it takes to be an officer not just because they are budddies. The sad part about all of this is we are all brothers and sisters by fire and all of us took an oath to help others by any means necessary to preserve life and property, but most of the people in the dept. would rather fight or worry about what each other are doing instead of what we are there to do and be a real family.
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Permalink Reply by Rich Mistkowski on
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Very interesting comments. It's nice to see that we are not alone. The challenge is going to continue going forward. We are now dipping into our fire fighters in their early 20's for officer positions.They don't have a lot of experience, the older guys are done, and so now we're asking people to lead who have never lead before. It's a bit of a scarey proposition. I know "on the job" training and experience is important, but in a volunteer fire company, we're not fighting fires everyday. Fires sometimes are few and far between. So we're asking young people who may only have training at the fire academy, who may not have any real fire experience to make some really important decisions. Decisions that could mean the difference between life and death. I know they don't think about that part of it now because they just want to fight the fire, but I'm a father of 2, own my own business, don't fight fires everyday. My goal is to make sure that our guys are safe, our community is safe, and that I get home safely. We have JUST ENOUGH people to fill officer roles, we don't have any others sitting in the wings. This all comes back the ability to continuously add members. The challenge in NJ is the way that Fire Fighter 1 is set up, makes it virtually impossible to have a job, have a family, and go to FF1.
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Permalink Reply by Norm Tindell on
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We have the opposite problem. Many older more experienced folks and not enough new ones. We're attempting to recruit new folks and retain all that we can.
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Permalink Reply by Bill Brierton on
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Those who can or who are eligible and have the experience and training, sometimes do not want to deal with the politics or the problems. Then you end up with those who are friends of the chief, who have neither the training or experience who are appointed in a position and screw up but remain an officer. Yep, I have seen all of it at the vfd's I have been at, and with two more years before I can hang up the boots all I want to do is be a fire fighter.
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Bill, boy do I hear you loud and clear! That's the other thing, the politics involved. One of our best firefighters is going to be Chief next year. This is his 2nd time around. He said, he's done after 2 years. He's coaching his kid in football and wants to be a firefighter. The politics is the other side that I completely forgot about that really takes it's toll on everyone. It's completely exhausting.
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Norm, how are your recruiting efforts going? And what about retaining everyone? How is that going?
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Permalink Reply by Just Plain Craig Moyer on
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My old company just had thier elections. Since no one is around the same people got appointed. Our deputy...well we need a picture to remind us what he looks like. Funny thing is. a couple of months ago we scratched on a working house fire NEXT DOOR to the fire house at 4am. Yesturday they scratched on a gas leak down the street. NO one and I mean absoloutely no one showed up. You would figure after elections people would show.
As far as qualifications Chief is good.Deputy and under have never ran a working fire except the 1st assistant. No one under 1st has ran a scene period including the deputy. No one has anthing but basic except the chief and 1st assistant.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Weber on
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We did the same thing last night too and the results are pretty much the same as yours.Seems to be a problem around here a lot anymore.We have people who have the training and experience who don't want a position and on the other hand we have some people who just want a title and have very little experience and training.We need three names to be nominated for each position and we don't have enough people anymore to get three good names for most positions.
The problem we are running into(and this is just the view from my seat)is people who want a title and could care less about putting the good of the department before their own ego trip.I am an officer and have been for a while now but I could give a crap less about personal credit for anything.If something I do goes wrong I'll not hesitate to say it was my fault and take the heat but if everything goes right I want the credit to go to the team,not me.That's the problem we are starting to have.
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