Combination dept's?

[RebeccaB]

How does a combination paid/vollie dept. work?
In the area I live, and surrounding counties either the department is all vol. or it's all full time. I had never heard about a comb.before starting to read through these post.
I don't see our area going full time for a while, but the way this area is growing I could see it being very possible with in the next 10 years.
How well do the full timers get along with the vol.? Do the vol. show up for all calls, or only when a fulltime is on vac. or out for other reasons? Or is it only like the Captain and one or two others that are paid full time and the rest are all vol.?

[resqtek]

My home town has a combo department. There are, I think, 5 paid firefighters who work monday-friday day shift. The vollys are on call after the paid FF's go off shift. It is a small city of about 10,000 with only one station housing a pumper and a bush truck. They all train together and get along really well. Alot of the vollys are trying to get on in the neigboring city which is full time paid and has a population of about 900,000. The paid firefighters on the department help them out through training and just good old fashioned support.

[pres41]

In our town (18,000 pop) there is a paid driver at each company 24/7 hired by the companys, the rest of the firefighters are volunteer.

[12TruckIrons]

The Dept I work for does someting like this. We are always staffed with full time firefighters working 24/48. We have 11 per shift on the floor in 3 stations. The volunteers are requested to do so many hours of station time a month about 24 I believe. They do not respond to regular calls if they are not doing time. Howevere if a major incident occurs ie structure fire, airplane crash, etc etc, A full alert is sent out requesting all Volunteers and off duty personnel to respond.

[tyler101]

In our department there are 37 full time firemen and 27 part-paid. The full timers work a 24/48 shift and take care of all ems calls. When a call comes in more full timers are called to the station to take their places for overtime. In case of a fire call all personel on station responds to the scene and the tones drop for everyone. All full timers are to report to the station and all part-paid are to report directly to the scene. (Part-Paid carry their gear with them at all times)

[hwoods]

We operate with 6 full time (1 Capt.,1 Tech, 4 F/Fs) working 4 10 hour days each week. This gives us 4 people on duty each day, Mon. thru Fri., 0700 til 1700. Nights, weekends, holidays are covered by volunteers. There are usually anywhere from 2-3 up to 6-8 volunteers around in the daytime as well. This schedule, and one where stations have full time people 24/7 is the norm in this area. The full coverage stations have people on a 24 on 72 off schedule. Washington DC and Baltimore are the only fully paid departments in a hundred miles of us, although there are some all volunteer, most are combination. We are totally amazed at some stories that we have heard about communities going from all volunteer to all paid. Such a move is, in my humble opinion, STUPID. Never, ever, give up volunteers, IF they want to serve. If volunteers need help, hire some help for them, BUT KEEP THE VOLUNTEERS. A place with a few people on duty backed up by more people who come on pagers, siren, Etc. is a lot better than a place with a few people on duty with no more help available. Stay Safe....

[Kobersteen]

Here in Fairfax County, we run a pseudo-combo dept. Paid FFs staff all the front line apparatus 24/7. Volunteers mostly supplement the paid staff (i.e. 5th on Engine, 4th on Truck, etc).

[Mike Ward]

K -

Don't forget that the Fairfax County volunteers also staff supplemental units that are 100% volunteer - Ambulance 821, Engine 822, Medic 414. Outside of the Penagon attack, the volunteers have been able to staff as many as four BLS engine companies, six ambulances and two medic units (weather-related Condition 3)

During bad winters, the volunteers provide 50 to 75% of the 4WD unit staff that work the plows or provide the FastTran dialysis transports. Up to 40 FastTran transports are needed every winter day - that frees up the ems units for emergencies.

Plus, they have provided engine/ambulance coverage during some weekdays/weekends when the career staff is out of the station for scheduled training (OARS, MUD drills.)

Mike

[martinm]

Just to give you another perspective.

Over here, many areas run mixed/combination fire services. Although all firefighters whether full or part time are paid for their services. My Brigade has 6 full time stations & 12 part time or mixed stations. Part time firefighters are on call in their home town or town where they work and are called via pager when needed. In many places, the part time firefighters are the 1st and only station in the area. So we are very much the first response to incidents in a large part of the brigade area. There are about 200 part time & roughly 150 full time station based firefighters, who work 4 on 4 off shifts.

[ccfdblehman]

In my department, we run out of two stations. one station has two paid people on 24 hours, for a total of 6 people working 24/48 and the other station runs m-f during the day. vollies are on call 24 hrs a day and the paid staff is on first thing out the door, whether it be ems or fire

[cozmosis]

In my hometown (approx. pop. of 9k), there are paid drivers at each of the two stations 24/7. Paid-per-call firefighters respond directly to the scene.

At my present department, career personnel handle any single company response (EMS, service calls, etc). On serious incidents (working fires, extrications, etc.), volunteers are paged out and either respond with a reserve rig or directly to the scene.