AGENDA #6a

 

BUDGET WORKING PAPER

 

 

TO:                  W. Calvin Horton, Town Manager

 

FROM:            Daniel Jones, Fire Chief

 

SUBJECT:       Feasibility of Using Volunteer Firefighters

 

DATE:             April 2, 2003

 

 

This report addresses the question of whether the Chapel Hill Fire Department could use volunteer firefighters to address operational staffing needs.

 

BACKGROUND

 

The Chapel Hill Fire Department has been a fully career fire department since approximately 1975 with the advent of the Public Safety system.  Prior to that time there was some use of volunteer firefighters but it was declining even before 1971.  The Public Safety system was a practice of cross-training police officers and firefighters in order to share a workforce.  The Town Council terminated that program in 1992 after determining that both fire and police services needed to be improved to meet contemporary needs.  We understand that Carrboro used volunteers on a limited basis into the early 1990s, but terminated their program in 1999.

 

The Fire Department has requested consideration of additional staffing to enhance fireground performance and coverage of the community.  The question of using volunteers to address that need was raised during a Council budget work session.

 

DISCUSSION

 

Volunteer firefighters are frequently used in rural areas or areas that have less population and development density than currently exists in Chapel Hill.  Of the ten fire departments in Orange County, eight are primarily volunteer in make-up; but, of those, four have added career positions in the last few years, because of the unavailability of volunteers, especially during daylight hours.  There still are a number of volunteer fire departments in northern states that serve densely populated suburban areas, but these are long standing departments with deep community support.

 

Generally volunteer fire departments are in decline across the country mostly due to the demands of training requirements and increasing need for advanced skills and technology use in emergency services.  The social demands of our time (two career families, persons who work two or more jobs, childcare issues, and economic pressures of maintaining households) have had a serious impact on recruitment and retention of persons serving as volunteer firefighters.  Chief Ray deFriess of the South Orange Rescue Squad has told us that in the last few years they have found it almost impossible to recruit volunteers, to the point that it has diminished their ability to deliver services.  South Orange Rescue is primarily based in Carrboro and has offered volunteer rescue and ambulance services in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area for over 25 years.  South Orange Rescue draws from university students and other local populations that would be similar to the populations from which we would expect to draw potential volunteer firefighters.  The commitment of hours needed to meet training requirements is difficult to fit in for persons who have full-time jobs or who are full-time students.  One also has to look at the type of population in a community and determine whether it is such that citizens would be interested in serving as firefighters.  The generally higher income and educational levels of Chapel Hill citizens indicate, in our opinion, that recruitment of sufficient number of volunteers would be unusually difficult, perhaps impossible.

 

In order to maintain even a minimum level of skill for volunteer firefighters, the volunteer force would have to receive three to four hours of training weekly, after completion of 520 hours of basic firefighter training.  There would also have to be additional training to incorporate new technologies or to upgrade skills.

 

Volunteer firefighting forces must carry pagers and respond from home or work when a fire alarm is sounded.  Many employers will no longer release employees to participate in volunteer firefighting organizations.  This creates a built-in delay in the arrival on scene of the firefighters.  Most critical and life saving functions occur in the first five to ten minutes of a firefighting operation.  The on-duty career personnel who arrive on the fire units will be the primary workforce for those critical functions as volunteers arrive several minutes after these critical functions occur.  The current staffing needs for the Chapel Hill Fire Department are directly related to the staffing requirements on-scene in the first minutes of a fire or large incident.

 

There would be significant costs associated with the start-up and maintaining of a volunteer firefighting force.  Costs include training, medical screening, protective clothing and basic uniforms for each volunteer firefighter.  Radio type pagers would be needed for each volunteer and we would need additional vehicles to transport these personnel.

 

CONCLUSION

 

We do not believe creating and maintaining a volunteer firefighting force to supplement the career firefighting staff of the Chapel Hill Fire Department would address the staffing needs that we have identified.  Additional staffing needed at major fires is readily available through mutual aid agreements with other surrounding fire departments.  This reduces the need for Chapel Hill to have volunteer firefighters for occasional major fires.  Recruiting and retention would be a significant obstacle to creating a viable volunteer force as would being able to meet the training requirements.  The time and costs associated with the effort to establish a volunteer firefighter program would not appear to be efficient or worthwhile.  We do not recommend this as a program that would be effective for the Chapel Hill Fire Department.