Submitted photos
The Wyoming Fire Department responds to a house fire in late 2013. The odd hours and heavy commitment of being a firefighter can hurt local fire departments’ retention and recruitment efforts.
Jeffrey Hage
Mille Lacs County Times
Shortly before 11 p.m. Jan. 15, 2014, a fiery explosion ripped through the Coin-Tainer Co.’s block-long manufacturing facility in Milaca.
As fire lit the January night sky, firefighters from four departments as close as Milaca and as far away as Onamia (22 miles north of Milaca) left the warm confines of their homes to fight the fire in 19-degree temperatures.
All were volunteers.
As of 2012, there were 1.1 million firefighters in the United States, and 70 percent were volunteers, according to data provided by the Mound Fire Department.
“They don’t do it for the money,” said Greg Lerud, co-chief of the Milaca Fire Department. “They do it to give back to the community.”
But the demands of training, an increasing number of emergency calls, a desire to be involved in the busy world of family activities and a firefighter candidate pool that is increasingly more transient is making fire service less attractive to volunteers throughout Minnesota.
Several area fire departments participated in a live burn training event hosted by the Wyoming department on Sept. 27.
“In Forest Lake, we’ve had a little more luck in our recruiting than some of our neighbors in the area (have),” said Forest Lake Fire Chief Gary Sigfrinius, who added that it’s a little harder to recruit in Columbus because not many people live in the required six-minute radius of the Columbus station on Kettle River Boulevard (next to city hall). “However, one of our problems is retention. … They get into it for a couple of years and realize what the commitment is.”
Sigfrinius said the biggest barrier to being a paid on-call firefighter, as most of his recruits are, is time. In the Forest Lake Fire Department, which serves both Forest Lake and Columbus, firefighters train every Tuesday night for three hours. Calls can take them away from work or family events, and all firefighter candidates in Minnesota must complete state-mandated Firefighter I and Firefighter II courses, which Northeast Sherburne Fire Chief Michael Rademacher said take up more than 200 hours of a candidate’s time in the first two years.
In Dayton, training goes one extra step: Firefighters must become emergency medical responder certified, Dayton Fire Chief Jason Mickelson said.
Firefighters have always needed to pass physical agility tests, but criminal background checks have become mandatory under state law. All firefighters must receive medical and hazmat training. The commitment to the job has to be strong. Sigfrinius said an advertisement for new firefighters usually attracts a few more than 20 applicants. The orientation explaining the commitments cuts the group down to about 15. The announcement of background checks requiring no felonies or DUIs in the last five years winnows the group down further, as does the physical agility test.
“When we’re down to interviewing, we interview nine and we take four,” he said.
The Anoka County Fire Training Academy was founded in 2012 to give all departments a place to train. Because of the significant time and financial investment it takes to train and equip a firefighter, Wyoming Fire Chief J.J. Hastings considers it a failure when a firefighter sticks with his department for less than five years. A firefighter needs experience and time around more seasoned veterans before he or she can really start to be effective, he said.
“When you have a brand new firefighter, the cost to the city is very high, and the benefit to the city is very low,” he said.
Loretto Fire Chief Jeff Leuer sees different time constraints for the modern firefighter than there used to be.
“One area I see different today, as opposed to when I was a kid, is that you played most of your sporting events within 5 or so miles. Today parents are having to take the children to areas miles away and sometimes out of state to participate in sporting events and school events. This takes firefighters out of the area to respond to calls,” Leuer said.
John Wolff, fire chief in Chanhassen, noted about 50 percent of his community is transient, pulling people who could be valuable volunteer firefighters out of the community for most of the day. Hastings and Sigfrinius recognized the same problem, noting that someone who works in Minneapolis won’t be able to drive back up to the Forest Lake area for a daytime house fire.
“It used to be back in the day that the local grocer and the local butcher hung up their apron and responded to the siren,” Sigfrinius said. “Those days are gone.”
With the exception of small, rural fire departments where many firefighters work in small towns, many other fire departments are struggling to recruit crews with members who are on board for fires in the daytime. In Forest Lake, the city tries to partially alleviate that problem by hiring two building officials who also serve as firefighters, able to drop their building-related duties midday if necessary.
Maple Grove Fire Chief Scott Anderson has used creative efforts to recruit daytime firefighters. He has stopped at garage sales and asked about who is home during the day. He then knocks on doors and asks whether anyone there is interested in being a firefighter. Maple Grove firefighters also use classroom visits as a recruitment tool. They ask kids to talk with parents about becoming firefighters.
“It’s not an easy thing to find people who can make the lifestyle decision work,” Hastings said.
The city of Wyoming had a period between 2002 and 2008 where retention was a major concern. The department lost 12 people, a significant blow to an organization that currently retains 27 active firefighters. When each person left, the department leadership would ask why.
There were a variety of reasons, from family changes to commitment issues, but Hastings said a big problem was that firefighters were not being trained in the tradition, culture and important role of the local fire department. In response, the department developed a mentorship program in which new firefighters learn about the department’s history, policy and procedure, hopefully becoming more in tune with what being a firefighter is all about. The city also intensified its application process, making sure that only the most committed applicants made it to the final stage of interviewing. In the last five years, the department has only lost three people.
“People become disenfranchised when they forget the value that they bring to the organization,” Hastings said.
Even when Forest Lake doesn’t have an advertisement out for new firefighters, Sigfrinius said he’s always trying to “shake the bushes.” If someone approaches him or another firefighter about applying when the department isn’t in the application process, he said, “We tell them come into city hall, make out an application, and we take that application and put it on file.”
To woo applicants, some fire departments have tried to find additional incentives to offer firefighters. Hastings and Sigfrinius said the best incentive is the knowledge that what you’re doing really matters – in fact, said Sigfrinius, there’s scarcely a better recruiting technique than a friend of family member seeing a dedicated firefighter drop what he’s doing to go help someone in need.
“Most of the time, the people who fill out the application are already interested in the business,” he said.
Fire Prevention Week is Oct. 5 through 11. This article is the first part of a series on fire department issues. For more information on local fire departments, see the Forest Lake Times’ Fire Prevention Week section on pages 10 and 11.
Editors Adam Gruenewald, Jessica Harper, Sue Van Cleaf, Jeff Hage, Theresa Malloy and Eric Hagen researched and wrote for this article series. Ryan Howard contributed to the local portions of this story.