To Bill Pederson, it’s not just a ruin. It’s a monument to bad firefighting.
Last week he walked past a neighbor’s house that was destroyed by fire a year ago. The Eagan Fire Department took 18 minutes to get a stream of water on the fire, because of a shortage of volunteer firefighters.
“It’s an embarrassment,” said Pederson, who is planning a one-year commemoration of the fire April 23. “A volunteer fire department is an outdated model in this day and age.”
15Eagan Fire Chief Mike Scott said the response to that fire was too slow and was a consequence of the manpower shortage. “In volunteer fire departments,” said Scott, “the one driving force is that you need volunteers.”
After decades of surviving every type of emergency, volunteer fire departments are facing a new hazard — a lack of volunteers. The state fire marshal’s office says Eagan is among the 94 percent of metro-area cities that are partially dependent on volunteers, and the shortage is slowing response times and increasing costs.
“In some cities this is reaching critical mass,” said State Fire Marshal Bruce West.
As volunteer firefighters drift away, cities are forced to hire full-time professionals costing up to $100,000 a year. The cost to cities could be staggering — volunteer firefighters save the state an estimated $742 million a year, according to a 2014 University of Minnesota study.
The state classifies part-time firefighters who respond to calls as volunteers — whether they are unpai, or get a nominal fee such as $15 per call.
The state fire marshal reports that in the metro area there are seven departments that use only full-time professional firefighters — St. Paul, Minneapolis, Richfield, Burnsville, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, the Mdewakanton Sioux Community, and the South Metro fire department, serving South St. Paul and West St. Paul. The other 126 departments rely on a combination of volunteers and professionals.
Minnesota is uniquely dependent on volunteers, according to the University of Minnesota study. The state has the fewest number of full-time firefighters per capita in the country, and the second-highest percentage of volunteer fire departments.
But 56 percent of the state’s counties saw a decline in volunteers from 2008 to 2012, the study said.
Lake Elmo Fire Chief Greg Malmquist said that is a sign that the volunteer system is broken.
In the 19th century, he said, pioneer towns would ring a fire bell and volunteers would come running to help extinguish fires. It works much the same way today, except volunteers have beepers and drive to the fire stations.
Malmquist now has 22 volunteer firefighters — and there should be 32. “We are short-staffed and we have been for years,” he said.
Woodbury has a fire station at Upper Afton Road and Century Avenue where the volunteer shortage is critical. “We have grave difficulty there, and it’s getting worse,” said Woodbury Fire Commander John Wallgren.
Eagan has 87 volunteers — which is 58 percent of what it needs, said fire chief Scott. Last year, 19 of them quit.
CHANGING TIMES
There are many reasons fewer volunteers are coming forward.
Residents no longer work near their homes. “We are a bedroom community,” said Lake Elmo’s Malmquist. When a fire breaks out, firefighters race from their jobs in places like the 3M campus in Maplewood or downtown St. Paul — and the drive adds as much as 10 minutes to the response time.
Potential firefighters — and everyone else — move more frequently and are less devoted to their communities.
They balk at the time commitment, according to Rob Boe, the public safety project coordinator for the League of Minnesota Cities.
“We see the shortage as a rising issue,” said Boe.
After Sept. 11, 2001, when the heroics of New York’s firefighters were on TV, thousands were inspired to join fire departments. But that glamour has faded, officials say.
Finally, there is the training. Firefighters must devote hundreds of hours to preparing for emergencies that their grandfathers couldn’t have imagined.
“We are all-hazard departments now,” said state fire marshal West. “We do floods, tornadoes, hazardous material spills. We come when someone throws a chemical into a mall. Or if there is a suicide bomber.”
DOES SERVICE SUFFER?
Officials worry that the volunteer-starved departments are lagging.
Volunteers are inherently less reliable. “There are no guarantees. You don’t know who’s on vacation, who’s out to dinner, or whose kids are sick,” said Malmquist. “You are at the mercy of their personal lives.”
From 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays, volunteers are working or out for the evening — and those are the worst hours to get an adequate response, he said.
In Eagan, volunteers take almost twice as long to respond to fires, said fire chief Scott. He said that in 2015, volunteers responded to calls in an average 8 minutes, 5 seconds. The full-time firefighters responded in 4 minutes, 48 seconds.
With fewer volunteers, cities are faced with a new era of higher costs.
Scott would like to boost Eagan from five full-time firefighters to 15 — at a cost of $1 million more a year.
The extra costs include building expenses. Lake Elmo is considering spending $10 million for two new fire stations, needed in part to provide housing for future full-timers working 24-hour shifts.
Woodbury has helped address its shortage by paying more — $11.30 per hour. But the city also requires that volunteers live no more than four minutes from their assigned station and go through training taking up to two years.
The effects of the volunteer shortage exploded in Eagan on April 23, 2015.
Fire chief Scott said the 18-minute wait to get water on the fire was longer than he would have liked.
“It was kind of a perfect storm,” said Scott. “With volunteers, you don’t have enough people, and you don’t know who is going to show up.”
Volunteers will always be slower than professional firefighters who wait at fire stations. “I have nothing but admiration for the volunteers. But the world is changing.”
For the neighbors, the fire was an unforgettable spectacle.
Pederson dashed outside to see the house being devoured by flames. The inferno was hot enough to crack several windows and melt shingles on the neighboring house.
Across the street, Melissa Ilaug stood on her lawn, transfixed by the sight. “We were getting sunburned from the heat,” she said.
She waited for help to arrive. And waited.
With more than 100 people watching, said Ilaug, the volunteer crew was unable to hook up hoses to the hydrant. When they finally did, the water dribbled out of their hoses, half-way up the driveway.
“It was incompetent, just incompetent,” said Ilaug.
Standing by the ashes of the house Tuesday, Pederson admitted that the volunteers save money.
But it’s time to spend the money to set up a competent fire department, he said. “Everyone likes being fiscally responsible, but no one wants to be known as the Walmart of the suburbs.
“This is the 21st century.”
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