career or paid

[yankee5lcvfd]

Hello I am student and I'm Writing a paper for my Government class and I need your opinion for it. We are a Medium sized rural county with seven fire stations and four rescue stations. I dont have the call count yet for the county but I wanted to get this started. In your opinion should a rapidly growing county start hiring paid firefighters and rescue personel. Let me know what information you need to help base your opinion. I do ask you of this NO ARGUING THIS IS NOT A DEBATE IT IS A POLL THAT IS GOING TO HELP A FIREFIGHTER IN TRAINING PLEASE DON'T TURN IT INTO A CAREER VS. VOLLY THRED.
Thank you very much for your time
Mike

[yankee5lcvfd]

Our calls for 2003 in our county were: EMS 4839 Fire 2425 -2004- EMS: 5933 Fire: 2046
2003 total: 7264
2004 total: 7979

Not much growth those two years but the calls have shifted to one end of the county because of subdivisions poping up there is a 1200 home subdivision under construction now.

As for the other questions I will look into getting the information for you.

Mike

[yankee5lcvfd]

come on ppl i need 5 pages for this report
mike

[Maverick9110E]

jeez, settle down not everyone can give you answeres for you homework at the drop of a hat.


anywho, with that amount of call volume i doubt any volunteer company could handle that, at 7,000 calls a year that an easy 19 calls per day. some paid depts. dont even get that many.

[PuffyNPFD]

You have to base your need to hire firefighters to either replace or supplement existing volunteers on a few things. First how well does your dept. respond timewise?? Do they get out within a reasonable amount or are retones needed frequently. Second, how many personnel are responding?? Are you responding with 1 or 2 people on a truck or are your responding with 5 or 6. Third, what time is your manning at it's thinnest?? Is it strictly betwen say 0600 to 1800. Most vollies without flexible jobs won't respond after say 0600. Many depts. start off at daytime manning, then adjust need accordingly. You WILL lose vollies when and if you hire. It is just the nature of the beast. Another thing to consider is the available pool of people to volunteer. Many people who move to a rural community don't have the time to volunteer and most come from a place where they have paid personnel and EXPECT prompt response because that is what they are used to. As they become voters and have a voice they will lobby for this service. A 1200 home subdivision with an average of 3 people per house means 3600 new people, most of whom will be too busy or uninterested to volunteer. Example: The town where I volunteer is 54 sq. miles with a population of 12,000. It is mostly residential with a water supply reservoir taking up about 35% of the sq. mileage. 20 yrs. ago it was mostly a farming community. Now it has become largely suburban with people moving from the smaller urban cities outside Providence. Most people think that we are paid (the town pays for part timers to staff ambulances from 0600 to 1800 every day but not with full timers). We run recruitment drives but we can't get volunteers. When I started 9 yrs. ago we would get out in the middle of the day with at least 9 or 10 people. Now we are luck to get 4. Retones and mutual aid are commonplace. It is a time factor as well as a societal factor. No one feels an obligation to help their fellow man. As this happens communites are faced with the reality of hiring personnel. My volly town is well on it's way; most likely sooner than later.