SOUTH COATESVILLE >> Attempting to address the decline of volunteerism in the firefighting and EMS community, a special committee is working on ways to increase recruitment and retention of volunteers.

Meeting at the Chester County Public Safety Training Campus at 7 p.m. Tuesday, the group discussed the changes besetting the firefighting community.

According to documents provided by the committee, the estimated number of volunteers in Pennsylvania has dropped from 300,000 in 1976 to a little over 50,000 in 2016. According to a website run by the committee, there are 17 percent fewer volunteers currently than there were 15 years ago.

In Chester County, there are about 5,000 first responders including fire, EMS and police, of which 2,400 are estimated to be fire and EMS.

This decline, along with several other changes besetting the volunteer fire service industry, have posed firefighting challenges for a developing suburban Philadelphia county.

CALL VOLUME

Because the county is developing, the “coverage area” fire and EMS crews need to cover increases, and because more people are living and working in the county, more calls to 911 are inevitably made.

Of the calls made to 911, Mike King, fire chief of the Glen Moore Fire Company, estimates between 50 percent can be classified as “non-critical.” Non-critical calls, such as a false alarms, can unnecessarily strain firefighters’ time and energy, by routinely calling the fire department out to check each and every alarm to make sure there is not a true emergency.

“We treat every call as a true emergency,” he said, but also added that firefighters can get complacent if a call from the same address repeatedly comes through and always turns out to be a false alarm.

He said the call volume for the county has quadrupled in the last 10 years, and that false alarms occur when batteries need to be replaced or if the sensors in the alarm system are not clean.

Firefighters train and are prepared to handle each call as a critical one. That can be frustrating for a volunteer service finding itself having to do more with less.

TRAINING REQUIREMENTS

Training requirements to become a firefighter have also increased as the number of scenarios they have been asked to respond to have broadened, such as responding to calls including hazardous chemical spills.

These additional responsibilities, along with an increase in training hours, have taken what King has described as a hobby and turned it into a business.

In 1976, he said a person needed to complete 20 hours to become an entry level firefighter. Now, over 200 hours are needed. One reason for the increase in training requirements is to learn how to use new and different kinds of equipment.

In addition to the increased training requirements, firefighters are finding they need to spend more and more time fundraising. King estimated the average fire department in the county spends 150 hours fundraising a year, and said some departments spend somewhere around 500 hours fundraising.

One way firefighters hope to retain and recruit is through high school programs. Some fire chiefs point to a program at Octorara High School where students can take classes relating to the firefighting service.

CONSEQUENCES

With the remedies to the decline of volunteer firefighting slow to catch up with the losses fire departments have incurred over the past several decades, more fire departments have found themselves having to add paid firefighters, a costly addition to a community where the cost and maintenance of equipment continues to rise.

Fire departments pay for additional salaries through a combination of fundraising, municipal funds, and in some places, a fire tax. Most revenue streams, however, typically originate from the taxpayer.

There is one positive to the decline in volunteerism, which is the increased teamwork between the fire departments. Fire departments now routinely train with neighboring ones so when a fire breaks out, they need all the help they can get to battle the blaze.

Not everyone who volunteers at a fire department is a trained firefighter. Many departments look for people willing to volunteer their time to perform administrative tasks. Fire departments look for lawyers and accountants to volunteer their time and expertise.

In order to help retain and recruit volunteers, www.helpfightfire.com is a website run by the retention committee, complete with statistical information, and even a function for visitors to type in their address and see what fire department they would volunteer at, if they chose to do so.

To contact Daily Local News staff writer Adam Farence, email afarence@dailylocal.com, or call 610-235-2647.