Fire departments of all shapes and sizes are facing serious, crippling staffing problems. One cannot go a day without hearing more news reports of layoffs, closed stations and too few volunteers.
For whatever reasons, fire departments continue to try to resolve their problems with staffing models that have not changed since the 19th century. Career firefighters insist that more funding for firefighters is the only answer. Volunteer departments keep looking for creative ways to find more volunteers.
I believe that viable solutions exist; ones that can apply to career, combination and volunteer fire departments, ones that are less costly yet will increase safety to the public and firefighters. What seems to be missing is leadership that can look past traditional staffing models and seek 21st century solutions.
Since its creation, the USFA has played key leadership roles in addressing public safety and firefighter safety problems. I saw it in the 1970's when the USFA took the lead in the development of residential sprinklers. When the change in home furnishings doubled the heat of dwelling fires, made them burn twice as fast and developed magnitudes more smoke, the USFA took the lead in improving turnout gear. These are just two of the many times that the USFA has led the way in finding cost-effective solutions to fire safety problems.
Today, fire department staffing is a critical fire safety issue, a problem that begs for national leadership. I think that it is time for the USFA to take the lead, as it has done in the past, to help jurisdictions resolve the staffing problems that are becoming a public safety plague.
To do this, the USFA should fund a new national public service program that applies specifically to the fire service. I suggest that they call it the US Fire Corps. The program would recruit qualified college-age volunteers to serve four-year terms as firefighters for free college educations in return.
The USFA's role would be to fund and oversee create pilot programs in different parts of the US that apply to a range of fire departments, from large career to small volunteer. The USFA would evaluate their progress and adapt to local conditions in order to ensure their long-term effectiveness. The initiative requires a multi-year commitment on the USFA's part. If the pilot programs meet their goals of providing more firefighters at significantly less cost, the USFA would then develop support services for jurisdictions that decide to create their own public service programs.
The Fire Corps model is similar to what the US military offers recruits, and their college incentive programs seem to work. A US Fire Corps should be an attractive alternative to the military route for performing a public service in order to get a college education. I recently wrote about some fire departments that are successfully using college student firefighters to bolster their ranks. My post on staffing appears elsewhere on this Blog, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice it to say that cost-effective methods currently exist that will sustain or increase staffing for significantly less cost. The USFA needs to take the lead once again in resolving our current fire safety crisis.
