Part 1: The impacts of hazmat and EMS on volunteer fire departments
By Joe Maruca
The days of a fire department responding only to extinguish fires are long gone. The modern fire department now responds to fewer fires but deals with a far greater range of complexities in terms of hazmat issues related to fires. And the modern fire department responds to far more emergencies and public assistance calls. In fact, for most fire departments today, the vast majority of their responses are for emergency medical services (EMS).
This means that the mission of the traditional volunteer “fire department” has changed. The problem is that in most cases, this change occurred without the direction or influence of the chief and volunteers (and the understanding of the community). This means many chiefs and volunteers (and communities) still think of their department’s mission in the old way, even as their day-to-day experience tells them another story.
This state of play has created conflict within fire department culture. It has complicated the leadership needs of the department and increased the financial needs of the department. It has also put an enormous strain on the time and skills of volunteer, part-time, or understaffed administration.
How the Mission Shifted
Here’s what happened, in broad strokes: Historically, the best firefighter became (volunteer) chief of department. These traditional chiefs excelled at responding to and extinguishing fires. They were great tacticians. They lived and worked in town, and they were pretty much always available.
These chiefs did a good job meeting the demands of the role. Call volume was comparatively low versus today’s workload. The paperwork burden was almost nonexistent. There was little to managing the budget, and there were no NFIRS, no patient reports, no standards, and few purchasing rules. That role called for leading a generally insular group of men who stayed with the department for decades. Recruitment and retention weren’t even part of the vocabulary, let alone chronic issues.
Then times started changing. Insurance requirements crept in, firefighter training got more complex, and even the materials used in firefighting (as well as the protocols, policies, and procedures) changed as the nature of fires themselves changed. Electrical cars on fire? Check. Houses flashing over faster? Check. And all the while, demand for EMS was on the rise.
Fire-Based EMS: The Solution for an Ailing System?
Through all of this, small-town chiefs and their departments advanced very slowly by comparison to the world around them. It was like the fable about the frog that gets boiled to death in a pot of water because the water, initially pleasantly cool, feels good, and then it changes temperature so slowly that the frog doesn’t notice. Small departments and their chiefs didn’t recognize the significance of the changes over the years. And now the water is boiling.
Data affirms how drastic the change has really been. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), in 1980 U.S. fire departments responded to 2,988,000 fires and 5,045,000 EMS incidents out of a total of 10,819,000 emergency calls. In terms of percentages, this was 27.5 percent fires, 46.6 percent EMS, and 25.8 percent public assistance and other emergencies.
Thirty-eight years later, In 2018, U.S. fire departments responded to only 1,318,500 fires, versus 23,551,500 EMS incidents out of a total 36,746,500 incidents. Fires now represent only about 3.5 percent of all the calls a typical fire department responds to, while EMS represents 64 percent, and public assistance and other emergencies represent 32.5 percent. EMS dominates.
This rise in EMS demands coupled with the decline in firefighting clashes with traditional firefighter culture and with department traditions. The small-town and volunteer fire service is full of stories of frustrated fire chiefs and community leaders bemoaning how nobody shows up for EMS calls or service calls, but everyone shows up for the big fire. Day in and day out, tones are repeatedly dropped to try and get an EMS crew for a medical call, or an engine to check out an “electrical odor.” We’re seeing poor morale, frustrated or unmotivated firefighters, and recruiting issues. We’re also seeing chiefs (still largely volunteer and part-time) who are overwhelmed with the administrative complexities of today’s fire and EMS service.
The EMS Effect
Consider in more detail the effect of the rise in demand for EMS. The growth in EMS is driving the growth in fire department responses. Even with steady populations, departments see the number of EMS calls grow because small-town populations are aging. As residents age, they use EMS more. It is suggested by the data that people over the age of 60 account for about 50 percent of all ambulance trips, yet this age group only represents about 18 percent of the country’s population.
The basic small-town volunteer fire department deployment model wasn’t designed to handle the volume of EMS calls that departments are facing. There is a limit to how many times a day a community can expect its volunteers to drop everything and rush to an EMS call. It’s hard to measure that threshold because it depends on a multitude of factors including the overall size of the department staff, whether people work in town or out of town, leadership, geography, and the employment (or unemployment) pattern.
Because EMS requires licensure, EMS training becomes a priority. But funding for training is scarce. This results in EMS training supplanting fire training, or at least the perception that it is supplanting fire training. This further adds to the fire and EMS culture clash.
The Hazmat Issue
Now consider the shift in the need for hazardous materials (hazmat) training and knowledge. Since 1986, when the NFPA first started gathering data on hazmat responses, hazmat has consistently represented about 1.5 percent of fire department responses. While this isn’t the same kind of explosive growth in terms of numbers and percentage of calls that has been experienced with EMS, it still represents four times as many incidents over 34 years. Here, as with EMS, departments have also incurred increased training needs – a minimum of 10 hours of operational level hazmat training is annually required by law for all fire departments. This has put an extra burden on smaller departments.
Additionally, the scope of hazmat has increased. The Emergency Response Guidebook, the current standard reference used by firefighters when arriving at a hazmat incident, has grown from 77 pages in 1977 (when first issued) to 392 pages in 2020. This represents greater than a fourfold increase in the number of hazardous chemicals that fire departments must be prepared to deal with, as well as greater complexity to the interventions.
The expanding mission and complexities that come with it have left fire and EMS chiefs feeling overwhelmed with paperwork and overwhelmed in general. Many of those appointed for their operational skills and availability are unhappy (or uncomfortable) with the fact that the chief’s job has evolved into leader, manager, and administrator, not just top firefighter or medic.
Tackling the Increased Administrative Needs
To start, fire departments need to communicate the challenges they face to city and town leaders. They need to make the case for much-needed additional support. This means data-driven written requests, reports, and proposals.
Then city and town leaders need to step up with support. A solution to part of the overall problem is to provide a professional administrator to assist the fire or EMS chief. Depending on the size and activity level of the department, this might be a one or two day a week part-time position or it might be a full-time job. It doesn’t have to be a firefighter; it must be someone who excels at filing, deadlines, responding to document requests, writing reports, human resource compliance, gathering data, and tracking training. They need to be really good at chasing people to complete trainings, filling out forms, scheduling meetings and appointments, and creating spreadsheets. They need to get all the paper off the fire chief’s desk and lift that burden from his or her shoulders.
Once the administrative burden is shifted away from the fire chief, the chief can focus on the bigger strategic issues that only the fire chief is positioned to address. These include recruitment of new members, training their members, partnering with other agencies, mentoring the next generation of officers and leaders, capital planning, and providing a vision for the future.
All this will require a mission shift within the department that needs a culture and deployment model to support it. I’ll address these factors in Part II of this article.
Joe Maruca is chief of the West Barnstable (MA) Fire Department, a combination fire department on Cape Cod. He served as a volunteer firefighter from 1977 until becoming chief in 2005. He is a director of the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) and represents the NVFC on the NFPA 1917 Technical Committee. Joe is a retired attorney and Of Counsel to the Crowell Law Office in Yarmouthport, concentrating in the area of estate planning.
MORE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ARTICLES
- Unmet Expectations: How New Members are Treated at a Fire/EMS Department
- Unmet Expectations: What a Volunteer Firefighter or EMT Does
- Volunteer Fire Department Leadership: The Nine Keys to Success
- Volunteer Fire Departments: Bait-and-Switch and a Question of Identity
- Recruiting Volunteer Firefighters Isn’t the Issue!
- The Volunteer Firefighter Training Crisis—and a Solution
