Becoming a firefighter requires a strenuous physical fitness test. In Roanoke City, it's a test fewer people wanted to take last year.
At City Council on Monday morning, Chief David Hoback said that fewer recruits are making it through training, and he's not quite sure why.
His department only interviewed around 60 candidates in 2012, way down for a normal year.
“We normally interview about 100-125 candidates, that's about a 50 percent reduction,” Hoback said. “So it's important to do what we can to make sure we get those numbers back.”
Hoback said 220 people signed up to take the physical fitness test and only half of them showed up.
He also said the pass rate for the test was around 20 percent below normal.
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