Volunteer Shifts

[wyattwyatt]

I am looking for input from Volunteer/Combination departments whose volunteers staff stations in shifts as opposed to reponding to a station on a per call basis. It would be helpful to know how large your department is, call volume, rural or urban setting, # of volunteer vs. paid firefighters and how long scheduled staffing has been implemented.

I would be particularly interested in how this staffing model effects recruitment and retention as well as overall operational performance and customer satisfaction.

A description of the shift schedule, what accommodations are made for firefighters not able to cover their shifts and how regular training is integrated into shift schedules would also be valuable.

I would appreciate input from any level (Chief to New Recruit)

Feel free to email me directly if you would prefer not to post your information. I am happy to keep any input anonymous if you desire.

wyatt@seanwyatt.com

Thank you in advance for any input.

Sean Wyatt

[SafetyPro]

We're an all volunteer department and do use a duty schedule. Our department's divided into three crews, each of which has a Captain II (CO), Captain I (XO), 1-2 Engineers and 10-12 Firefighters.

We have a minimum of 7 on duty at any given time. This includes a 4-person engine crew (Captain, Engineer and two FFs), a driver for the ambulance, a driver for the utility truck (Ford F-350) and a duty Chief. If a call comes in, all except the Chief are required to respond. The Chief only HAS to respond if the engine rolls or if he's specifically dispatched, but often does respond anyway. The ambulance and utility are taken home at night and on weekends by whomever's staffing them, and they respond directly to the scene for all calls. The rest (as well as any off-duty personnel) respond either to the scene for EMS calls or to the station for anything else.

We have three types of shifts: weekdays, weeknights and weekends.

Weekday shifts are 6 AM to 6 PM Monday through Friday, and are staffed by the informal "Day Crew" which consists of about 15 of us who work in town. The ambulance is usually staffed by our paid Fire Marshal and/or Fire Inspector (one of the BCs).

Weeknight shifts are 6 PM to 6 AM Tuesday through Thursday. The weeks rotate between the three crews, so one week will be Crew 1's, the next Crew 2's, etc.

Weekend shifts are 6 PM Friday through 6 AM Monday and 6 PM Monday through 6 AM Tuesday. My crew breaks this down into an "A Shift" of 6 PM Friday through 6 PM Saturday and 6 PM Monday through 6 AM Tuesday and a "B Shift" of 6 PM Saturday through 6 AM Monday (each works out to 36 hours total). The other two crews break it down differently. We do station/equipment maintenance during our duty weekends.

The weeknights and weekends rotate as follows:

Crew 1 weekend -> Crew 3 weeknights -> Crew 2 weekend -> Crew 1 weeknights -> Crew 3 weekend -> Crew 2 weeknights

If a holiday falls on a Monday (like this coming weekend), that day shift is attached to the weekend shift.

Since there's four chiefs, their duty schedule rotates differently than the three crews. They do this so that one chief isn't always attached to the same crew.

On my crew, we're expected to sign up for 2 to 4 weeknights a month (depending on how many duty weeks we have) and either the A Shift or the B Shift each duty weekend. Those who are qualified to drive the ambulance (3 months on, EMT-1 and have a state ambulance license) are required to staff the ambulance at least 1-2 weeknights and one weekend shift a month.

If we can't make an assigned duty shift or meet the above requirements, we swap with FFs from other crews. We have a board right inside the door that shows who's covering for whom. This year to date, I've pulled 756 hours of duty, of which 61 hours have been covering for someone.

All that being said, we almost always get more than just the duty personnel to every call. Personally, if I'm in town, I respond. 62% of the calls I've been on this year have been when I was technically off-duty.

[SafetyPro]

Missed the part about drills.

We have a drill scheduled every Wednesday night and the second and fourth Friday nights of the month. The first Wednesday of the month is an EMS drill and the fourth is a probie drill. The second Friday is a short drill before our monthly meeting, and the fourth is a long, usually manipulative, drill. This is essentially seperate from the duty schedule: all members are expected to attend 25% of all drills/meetings. Probies have to attend 50% of all drills/meetings and 80% of the probie drills. If you're on-duty during a drill, you just go. The off-duty members participating in the drill generally don't respond unless its a big call. If we're doing a manipulative drill (which is often done elsewhere than the station with 2-3 pieces of apparatus), we designate one engine as the "fast" engine and don't pull any equipment from it so that it can respond.

Each duty crew also does a crew drill on their duty weekend. This can include hydrant/hose drills (my crew does a lot of these), pre-planning around the city, classroom drills, etc. Another thing that's often done is to assign a probie to conduct a thorough drill on a specific piece of equipment, such as the K-12 saw, which allows the Captain to evaluate their familiarity and provides a good refresher to everyone else.

[hwoods]

We have 5 Full Time Firefighters working 07:00 to 17:00. Each of them works 4 10 hour days each week for a 40 hour week. each of them is off on any day. We have 2 Medics that work 24 on 72 off each shift. The rest of the crew (about 60 people) is Volunteer, including all officers except 1 paid Captain. Each Volunteer is asked to do one night per week (6-7 PM to 11 PM) or a Day shift on Sat or Sun. There are currently 6 members who live at the station. So far, this has worked very well for us. We had 7,879 Responses last year.

[stcommodore]

Engine, Rescue, Ladder Company.

Responds on per call basis, but normally has people in the station at peak hours keeping responce time on rolling a truck between 4-6min.

Big Drill Tuesday, Smaller Sunday morning.

[wallsfd949]

All volunteer station that runs 6 duty crews which correspond to our ambulance crew schedule.

A, A-1, B, B-1, C, and C-1

Duty crews run from 6pm - 6am (or whenever we have to leave for work).

Each crew is has 4-5 members assigned to it and works 1 night per week. The easiest way to explain it is you work 3 of the same weeknights in a row, then add 4 days to it.

Thursday, Thursday, Thursday,
Monday, Monday, Monday,
Friday,.... and so on.

http://www.wallsfiredept.org/members/calendar_select.php
May offer more explanation.

[JROBINSONEFD]

I HAVE AN 80 + ACTIVE MEMBER FIRE DEPARTMENT. WE RUN AN AVERAGE OF 185 CALLS A YEAR 90% ARE EMS. OUT AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME IS 3-4 MINUTE. I AM VERY FORTINATE. WE HAVE A LOT OF EMS MEMBERS THAT ARE EITHER BOTH FIRE/EMS OR JUST EMS. A FEW YEARS AGO WE ASKED THE MEMBERSHIP IF THEY WANTED TO DO SHIFTS FOR EMS CALLS. WELL LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, IMAGINE 80 HANDS SLAPPING YOU IN THE FACE. IT WOULD PROBABLY HURT. THEY SAID THAT THEY WOULD RESIGN. IT'S NOT OUR DEPARTMENT. WHEN WE RESPOND TO CALLS, IT'S LIKE FIRST COME FIRST SERVE. FIRST PERSON THERE GET THE TRUCK(S). AND EVERYONE FOLLOWS BEHIND IT HAS WORKED VERY WELL FOR YEARS. JUST A LOT OF CARS AT A SCENE. MY SUGGESTION TO YOU IS, ASK THEM, IT IS THEY WHO ARE RESPONDING AND DOING THE WORK, ASK THEM. IT CAN'T HURT.

[wyattwyatt]

Thanks to all for your responses.

It is always good to see/hear what other departments are doing. We are evaluating the need to change from a response per call to a staffed station model with additional response for multiple alarm incidents.

Thanks again,

Sean Wyatt

[Bones42]

FD responds to average 250 calls per year. EMS (separate agency) responds to average 1500 calls per year. All are home response to station. No shifts, pager goes off - people show up. Average response for EMS is 4 members, rig out the door under 5 mins. Response for FD is 18 members, rig out the door under 4 mins.

[Eng34FF]

Our department runs about 800 fire calls and 1500 ambulance calls a year, although the fire calls are way down this year so far. We have seven duty crews plus two saturday/weekend crews. Each regular crew runs once every 8 days. Duty runs from 18:00 to 5:00 monday through friday and is 24 hours on saturday, sunday and holidays. The saturday crews work every other saturday. Every member is required to either run on a crew, or sign up for daytime duty. The exceptions are for members on "lifetime" status, or those with injuries or otherwise unable to perform.

We have crew sizes ranging from 4 to 6 people including at least an ambulance driver and EMT. Since we may be short on the fire side, members are needed to come from home and/or spend time at the station when it is not their duty night in order to staff the apparatus for fire calls.

We have drill every thursday night, so it is not tied to a certain duty crew.

Overall I like having scheduled duty. It makes it easier to plan with work travel and personel events.

[jcasey]

EMS (paid on call) scheduels 6 hour blocks for a two week period. 6p to 6a has some in house sleepers, otherwise you have a 2 min time frame to get to the station. We staff one truck on call w/ one driver and two EMTs, and the backup truck is first 3 to call in gets it. We avg 450 runs a year. Just don't have the staff or money to keep 'em there all the time! Fire is who ever shows up...w/automatic mutual aid in the day (coming in or going out).