Larry Sagen says there will soon be a shortage hitting the fire service -- a shortage of qualified, hard-working people from diverse backgrounds.
Sagen is at the helm of FIRE 20/20, a nonprofit group dedicated to connecting responders to the communities they serve.
"A majority of women of all cultures and men of color came into the fire service through affirmative action," he says. "What's happening is a lot of them have had a career in the fire service and their retirement is coming up. We are about to lose a significant percentage of women and minorities in the coming years -- it's already started."
And, Sagen says, as the United States grows more diverse, the need for first responders to have different faces, different backgrounds, is more important than ever.
"Most first responders are out when the bell goes off, they are responders and that's really part of the fire culture," Sagen says. "But when the bell's not going off, the fire service is not generally going into the community building relationships."
He says that a disconnect between firefighters and their multicultural communities can lead to mistrust and misunderstandings -- and that could be dangerous to both firefighters and the people they are trying to save in the event of an emergency.
Sagen and his group believe the best way to remedy this situation is through increased recruitment efforts targeting women and people of color. To this end, they've produced a new video called Why I Chose Fire, made available last month.
The video offers a glimpse into what it's like to be black, or Hispanic, or a woman and working in the fire service. And it tells viewers that no matter how different they might be, there could be a place for them within the fire service as well. It's a bit of positive public relations that Sagen says the service definitely needs.
"The video came about because...we learned that a lot of young women of all cultures and young men of color had no idea at all that this was a career possibility. They didn't have a lot of role models. If a fire truck or ambulance went by and they didn't see a women or person of color, it didn't strike them as 'this is something that I'd like to check out.'"
Moreover, he says, although affirmative action brought new faces into the service, it didn't exactly make it easy or enjoyable for those faces to stay.
"A lot of our fire departments were not prepared to see people who were different, didn't treat those people very well."
But he hopes FIRE 20/20's efforts can change that. "The fire service has an opportunity to be more inclusive, not just more diverse. Inclusively and diversity aren't necessarily the same."
The video is free to all fire departments. It's available streaming online, or, if a department wishes to download a copy they can go to the website and submit a request form. For departments that would like their copy to be branded just for them, the group can do that for a small fee, which includes the creation of a custom web page with their logo and a message from the chief.
The efforts were made possible through sponsorship by Lion Apparel, Scott Health and Safety, TenCate SouthernMills and PBI Performance Products, Inc..
