Of all emergency services, none depends on volunteers as much as local fire departments.
In a time when volunteer fire departments still account for a majority in Windham County, two factors affect response time and the number of responders when a call comes in: the economy and recruitment.
Ten out of 10 Windham County fire chiefs who talked about their work with The Commons recently all agree with the basic sentiment voiced by one who said, not for attribution: “We're just holding our breath hoping the worst doesn't happen.”
Even the fire departments with full-time staff struggle to balance coverage “in an event” against the safety of their personnel on the scene.
Saxtons River Fire Chief Arthur Smith said that he can count on two qualified people to show up on a call during the week during working hours. And, he said, while the Village of Saxtons River and the Town of Rockingham both support the department “110 percent, we run on a shoestring.”
The all-volunteer department of 20 firefighters responds to “70 fire-related calls a year,” and about 90 rescue or first-responder calls, Smith said.
Grafton's volunteer fire and rescue department is facing a challenge many volunteer forces are also confronting.
“Our shortages have been not financial,” Fire Chief Eric Stevens said. “We've had very good support from community with volunteer contributions and steady support from the town via taxes.”
Where Grafton's department is hurting “is in retaining people,” he said.
“We're losing people - mostly to old age and to the fact that most young households have to have two wage earners to stay afloat,” Stevens said. “It's difficult for someone to take time off to volunteer.”
Stevens added that “a lot of our volunteers are retired and live here, or work here,” and can respond when a call comes in.
Grafton's attrition problem is reflected over and over throughout Windham County, and not just in volunteer fire departments, which creates safety issues no one wants to speak about officially.
One fire chief, who declined to be identified for this comment, said that “when only two volunteers show up, you do what you have to do” at the event, and this may include “unsafe practices.”
Like what?
“Well, putting someone in an attic by [himself]” to fight an interior fire, the fire chief said.
Fire safety rules require two firefighters together in that situation. “But what are you going to do? Let the building burn?”
The fire chief was clear that he had witnessed his example only once, but almost all the other fire chiefs, when asked the same question said that, in the volunteer departments they lead, they had been faced with similar situations at least once when responding to a fire call.
Little wiggle room
Of all the towns and villages in Windham County with fire departments, only Brattleboro and Bellows Falls qualify as having one that is considered full-time.
In Brattleboro, 25 paid “career” Fire Fighter I and EMT-qualified personnel work full time, with another 50 on call to come in and work part time as needed.
In Bellows Falls, Chief William Weston, Deputy Chief Steve Cenate, and two full-time shift firefighters cover the village 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 365 days a year.
But there's little wiggle room.
As Weston pointed out, “If one of our full timers wants to take vacation time to be with his family, or for whatever reason, either I or the deputy chief has to cover his shift” in addition to their own respective duties.
Weston said that “works out okay” for him. He doesn't have a wife or kids. But Cenate does, so Weston said that he will often take on a shift to leave his deputy free to be with his family.
Brattleboro Fire Chief Michael Bucossi acknowledges that with 25 full-time responders, he does not run into that particular problem so much. But he still has 10 to 12 hours per day of shifts to cover regularly, and when there is a call, even when he's off duty, “I gotta go,” he said.
For combination departments like Putney, which rely on a combination of paid professionals and volunteers, Chief Thomas Goddard, the department's only full-timer, said that he similarly works consistently long days.
His family understands that “it's my job,” Goddard said.
His deputy chief, Christopher Fellows, is paid a stipend for around 10 hours a week, but “he regularly works way more than that,” he said.
But in addition to him and Fellows, “we have between three and five core people we can count on” to respond when a call comes in, Goddard said.
Both Bucossi and Goddard used the same phrase when describing the slack that their families afford them.
“It's my job,” they said.
'A crucial difference for someone'
Most chiefs of the county's volunteer fire forces hold other jobs, and so do their volunteers, making their employers stakeholders in the county's firefighting infrastructure.
Without exception, each of the fire chiefs interviewed for this story said that more and more employers are making it risky - if not impossible - for a volunteer firefighter to leave his or her job to respond to a call.
“Volunteers can't just leave their jobs now when a call comes in and expect to have that job when they return,” Weston said. “So they aren't responding. They can't afford to lose their jobs.”
“We have more people having to drive 20 miles or more to get to work,” Weston said.
“Their employers aren't from there, so what do they care?” observed Joseph Sangermano of Southwestern New Hampshire District Fire Mutual Aid System.
But Jared Bristol, chief of the Guilford Volunteer Fire Department, said, “We're lucky. We're one of the few [volunteer fire departments] that has not struggled.”
He said that his department's 25 volunteers all “live within the area” and can respond to the fire station within five minutes when a call comes in. Others can go directly to the scene [because they know where it is and are closer] and “assess the situation” to help determine personnel, equipment, or mutual aid needs.
Brian Richardson of Rescue, Inc., the nonprofit ambulance service that serves most of southern Windham County, said that he could think of numerous occasions where the first responders from a fire department made a crucial difference for someone.
Richardson, the assistant chief of operations, emphasized the importance of first responders, who make it possible for the ambulance crew to arrive fully prepared to deal with the specific medical emergency.
Having first responders on the scene to assess the patient to determine the need for a helicopter, extra equipment, or supplies “makes our job go so much better,” he said.
“It's crucial to have first responders [from the fire department] who are trained to assess and stabilize a patient on the scene before we get there,” he added.
Richardson said that Rescue personnel, a combination of professional staff and volunteers, can take 8 to 10 minutes or longer to get to the scene of an accident.
For a cardiac episode, brain injury, or diabetic emergency, shortening the response time can improve the quality of recovery as well as “determine life or death” for a patient, Richardson said.
Training the next generation
Buccossi, noting several unique aspects of Brattleboro's fire department, said his force has a small waiting list of three or four people whom he can hire when his budget will permit.
He said the department also offers a Junior Firefighters course at Brattleboro Union High School, where most of the graduates of the class join the department in some capacity after they graduate.
“It's not like it used to be where you just show up [at a fire], and get your training on the job,” Buccossi said. “And there are a lot of positions that don't involve being on site and fighting fires so if someone doesn't want to fight fires, there is something else they can do, like dispatch or driving or handling hoses.”
“We have about 10 to 15 students who go through the classes,” he said. However, “When someone applies, there are interviews and background checks because of insurance and liability issues.”
“About two-thirds of our call force can do most of everything our full-time force can do,” Buccossi said. There are requirements to stay current on certifications, and there are ongoing education opportunities, the costs of which are covered by the fire department.
But, Buccossi understands that not all departments are so lucky, and he attributes that to being able to budget for full-time coverage, as well as paid on-call firefighters. “We have career firefighters. Most of them have been here from 10 to 30 years.”
All departments are required to have on scene at least one Fire Fighter I responder, whose certification can be earned over time. Some departments only have one.
Training starts with EMT and first responder courses, some of which are offered locally. Others require firefighters to drive to Montpelier.
Not everyone in the department is a firefighter, Bucossi said. Dispatchers, mechanical engineers, and drivers are some of the non-firefighting positions within the departments.
Arthur Smith, captain of the all-volunteer Saxtons River fire department, said a couple of his Saxtons River firefighters liked his department's training program so much that they went on to become full-time career firefighters at other departments.
“We support and encouragement them, and we train them. We appreciated their help while they were here. We were glad to have them,” he said.
Much of the costs for training are covered by grants from various government state and federal agencies. The biggest cost for municipalities is insurance and liability for the fire fighters and rescue personnel. And those costs keep rising every year.
Departments working together
West Dummerston Fire Chief Rick Looman heads an all-volunteer department of 31 members, responding to about 160 calls a year. “Almost all my volunteers work in Brattleboro,” so they are not far away, he said.
“When low manpower occurs, mutual aid is key,” Looman said. “If it's a brush fire, it's really nice to have the help.”
Looman, whose father served as fire chief for a quarter century, has been coming to the fire department in one capacity or another since he was 12 years old. He was elected fire chief two years ago.
He works for the town highway department and “sometimes it takes five or ten minutes to get to the station, suit up and the engine started and rolling.” For a first alarm call, that is okay. For a second alarm call or anything more serious, they depend on mutual aid.
Calls from 77 towns and villages in the Connecticut River valley on both sides of the river, extending as far northwest as Athens and Londonderry, as far southwest as Readsboro and Bennington, as far east as Rindge, N.H., and as far north as Sunapee, N.H., are dispatched through the Southwestern New Hampshire District Fire Mutual Aid System (SNHDFMA) in Keene.
The nonprofit is set up so that the towns closest to one another are the first ones called for assistance, whether it's for responders or equipment.
It “goes outward from there,” Goddard said.
Most calls in any given town require mutual aid requests whether for equipment or personnel, as well as being routed automatically through the call center.
One benefit, Goddard explained, is that what “one town doesn't have, another town does” in terms of equipment.
Sangermano and nine other full-time dispatchers with SNHDFMA have sent responders to about 16,300 calls from January to September, an average of roughly 60 per day.
Sangermano noted that calls have been increasing by 2 to 3 percent each year, and “by far the majority of our calls” - about 65 percent - “are medical in nature.” He attributed that statistic to an aging baby-boomer population. The rest are fire-related calls.
Sangermano explained that mutual aid calls the department closest to an event, and will wait for personnel to arrive on the scene to give an assessment.
It can take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes or longer for volunteers to arrive. They must first leave home or work to come to the station, then gear up, and get the necessary rigs rolling.
In some more severe emergencies, SNDFMAS's protocol will instruct Sangermano and his fellow dispatchers to call the fire department next on the list for mutual aid to assist with personnel and equipment.
Mutual aid dispatch has an agreement with all “but a couple of towns” to dispatch fire department first responders at the same time as they call the ambulance service when medical assist calls come in.
“Those towns we don't call either don't have the equipment or the personnel” to respond to a medical emergency, Sangermano said. “So we will call the next closest department to respond, as well as the ambulance.”
Keeping equipment running
Smith said that he would like a new fire station in Saxtons River “so we can upgrade and modernize our equipment.”
“We wanted to get a new rescue vehicle a few years ago but [the new one] was six inches higher than the door into the station,” Smith said.
The department, which responds to about 70 calls a year for fire, and 90 calls for medical assists, “mostly in Saxtons River and Athens,” has one rescue vehicle and two tankers. One tanker is the 2007 engine that Rockingham voters approved, a purchase aided by a grant, Smith said.
A fire truck is by far the largest line-item expense. Brattleboro is budgeting $400,000 for a new truck, and “we have to specifically say what our requirements are in order for any item to be included on the truck,” Buccossi explained.
He said he has compiled a detailed requisition form that is nearly an inch thick. The manufacturer will customize the truck to those specifications.
Fire and rescue response vehicles can cost from $200,000 to as high as $1 million. Fire departments regularly maintain vehicles that are up to 25 years old before they are replaced.
“And since it's specialized equipment, parts are expensive. The mechanics are specialists who only work on fire equipment, and don't come cheap either,” Buccossi explained.
Approval for a town to purchase new equipment for a fire department comes from voters at Town Meeting. By and large, when it comes to fire and rescue, community support is there, the chiefs said.
Westminster approved “a beautiful new fire station building” about 10 years ago, Fire Chief Cole Streeter said. “The community uses it on a weekly basis, not just the fire department.”
Looman said that in Dummerston, the town makes sure “the guys get what they need” to protect and keep them safe.
Most recently, the town applied for and received a grant that bought 19 new air packs that can keep firefighters breathing for 30 minutes.
“These are lighter and more compact,” Looman pointed out. “A firefighter can get into tighter spaces and isn't carrying as big a load.” When a firefighter is lugging other specialized equipment into a smoky, hot, enclosed space, the new packs help preserve strength to fight a fire more effectively.
The chief describes Dummerston's newest engine, purchased in 2009 for $100,000, as a basic truck that “has what we need …including a foam and deck gun.” Such equipment can project high volumes of water or fire-retardant foam onto a blaze.
But towns have also responded to the economic slump and resulting budget concerns by “being very frugal,” according to Streeter, who listed one example from Westminster: “We have not replaced our aging hose.”
He said one of their biggest costs is dispatching which jumped a little over 10 years ago from about $6,000 to $8,000 a year to $28,000 a year.
Streeter said that happened at about the same time that SNHMA stopped covering police calls.
“We were told we had been getting a good deal before and that this change was necessary for them to cover their costs,” he said.
“We put our heads together to see if there was an alternative,” Streeter said. “But so far we haven't come up with anything.”
Would regionalization offer a solution?
Other fire departments like Putney, Grafton and Bellows Falls are seeing an aging firefighter forces, and almost no new members coming in to replace them.
“We depend on mutual aid to fill any gaps,” Goddard said. With few if any new recruits and more calls each year with the increasing and aging population in Vermont, according to Sangermano, the burden on fire departments has people starting to think about regionalization.
Costs may be shared between municipalities, but the cost in quality of recovery and even critical response time may be more than a community is willing to risk.
Sangermano and Goddard both point out that response time to an event is increased unless you live next to the station, and if towns regionalize their services, “who decides who gets the station?” Goddard pointed out.
“If it is your parent or child who needs the ambulance, or your house on fire, are you going to be willing to wait the extra few minutes for the rescue response team or the fire fighters to get there?”
“The first few minutes in any event are critical,” Goddard said. “Who are you going to ask to wait a few minutes longer because they are farther away from a regional fire department?”