Challenges to Volunteer Fire Departments
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It is becoming increasingly difficult for volunteer fire departments to recruit members and to retain the ones they do for long periods of a time. In 1984, the National Fire Protection Association listed 897,750 volunteer firefighters in the United States which responded to a call volume of 11 million responses. But in 2007, that call volume has ballooned to 25 million while the number of firefighters had dropped to 825,450. This is an alarming trend when one examines the demographics of the United States.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau the United States has an estimated population of 308,585,287 people in our nation (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). In the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) Fire Service Statistics report released in November 2008, the NFPA stated that there were roughly 1,148,800 firefighters in the U.S. in 2007. Of that number, 825,450 (72%) were categorized as volunteer firefighters while the remaining 323,350 (28%) were listed as career firefighters (NFPA, 2008.) According to the United States Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program’s July 1, 2007 statistics there were an estimated 308,585,287 people in the nation (US Census Bureau, 2010.) The U.S. Fire Administration Firefighter Fatalities in the United States in 2007 Report was released in June 2008. The report shows that on duty firefighter deaths included 68 volunteer firefighters and 50 career firefighters. Among the volunteer firefighter fatalities, 63 were from local or municipal volunteer fire departments, and 5 were part-time or full-time members of wildland fire agencies. Citing the NFPA’s statistics again, the majority of the career firefighters (74%) serve communities that protect 25,000 or more people; whereas, the majority of the volunteer firefighters (95%) protect communities of fewer than 25,000 people with more than half located in small, rural departments which protect fewer than 2,500 people. Finally, according to the US Census Bureau, 64% of our population lives outside of the nation’s urban centers.
