Hard times for volunteer fire companies

FOR THE INQUIRER

MARIETTA, Pa. - For 169 years, the members of Pioneer Fire Company No. 1 have been performing one of America's most dangerous and critical jobs for this tiny borough along the Susquehanna River in rural Lancaster County.

They are roused from dinner and sleep to follow the siren's song to what is often a gamble with the unknown - a unique combination of fire dynamics and combustible materials. Death and serious injury - from burns, toxic gases, hidden explosives, collapsed floors, and caved-in roofs - are only a ladder rung away.

Remarkably, they do it all for nothing. Voluntarily, they go to blazes. The same service from a paid department would cost local taxpayers at least $300,000 a year. Instead, they pay a fraction of that as a token subsidy.

But throughout suburban and rural Pennsylvania, the volunteer fire company - an institution that dates to Ben Franklin - is in deep trouble. Just 35 years ago there were 300,000 volunteer firemen in Pennsylvania; today there are no more than 50,000 - a decline of about 80 percent.

"Many Pennsylvania communities are dangerously short of firefighters, especially in the daytime," said Edward Mann, the state fire commissioner. "Ordinary house fires are getting second and third alarms, not because they need the apparatus, but because they need the firefighters."

A survey of 915 Pennsylvania departments this year by the Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. found that 60 percent were still losing volunteers, 66 percent had delayed buying new equipment, and 54 percent did not have protective equipment for all personnel to respond to hazardous-materials calls.

In the suburbs around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, a new kind of company has emerged, a hybrid that is still mostly volunteers but that includes at least one full-time, paid firefighter. In other suburban areas, especially around Washington, such "combination" companies are stepping-stones to units made up entirely of career firefighters financed by taxpayers.

The East Whiteland Volunteer Fire Association in Chester County hired its first paid fireman in 1996, and today it has a force of nine full-timers and eight part-timers backed up by some 30 volunteers. The arrangement costs township taxpayers about $1.2 million this year.

There is no accurate information on the number of combination companies in the Philadelphia suburbs, but other municipalities with such units are Montgomery Township, Pottstown, Lower Merion, Conshohocken, Norristown, and Bryn Athyn in Montgomery County; Berwyn, Phoenixville, and Coatesville in Chester County; and Upper Darby and Darby in Delaware County.

Last year the Westwood Fire Company in Chester County received a $445,000 federal Homeland Security grant to help volunteer companies throughout the county recruit and retain firemen. John Sly, the assistant Westwood chief, said the money would be spent on newspaper, billboard, and television advertising, Web sites, and presentations at high schools.

Jon Merrell, president of the Marietta company, says there are 80 members of the department, but only 16 are active firefighters, half as many as there were 20 years ago.

He gives three reasons for the declining interest: fund-raising, training, and lifestyle changes.

Mann agrees.

Today's volunteer fireman spends far more time chasing money than fires.

This year Pioneer No. 1 needs about $90,000 to operate, and it will get only about $40,000 of that from the borough. The rest will have to come from an array of events that includes a monthly bingo game, a chicken barbecue six times a year, bake sales, sandwich sales, pancake breakfasts, spaghetti dinners, raffles, dances, carnivals, Atlantic City bus trips, and "fill-the-boots" days when members stand on street corners and ask motorists to toss loose change into their empty boots.

"Anything we can do to raise money - you name it, we'll try it," says Merrell. "But these guys signed on to fight fires, and a lot of them resent the fact that they spend about 70 percent of their time at the menial tasks of fund-raising. They get tired of flipping chickens and calling out bingo numbers, and so they quit."

The old "surround-and-drown" theory of firefighting has given way to more sophisticated techniques that require more equipment and more training to meet more complex fires. Marietta, like most volunteer departments, subjects its members to the same training levels as paid city firemen. Before they can ride on one of the company's two trucks, new members must take some 200 hours of training. Active members spend about 10 hours a week in additional training in advanced firefighting, handling hazardous materials, water rescue, and other activities.

"I don't get excited about a new volunteer until he's completed the training," says Merrell. "We get a lot of prospective new members who, once they see this commitment, walk out and are never heard from again."

Along with more modern firefighting techniques comes the need for expensive new equipment. "Twenty-five years ago when the siren went off, I'd run out and jump on the back of the truck," says Harold Kulman, a veteran Marietta firefighter. "Now I have to put on $2,000 worth of clothing and equipment. You've got to sell a lot of chicken to come up with that kind of money."

By default, volunteer fire departments have become custodians of streets and highways, cleaning up liquids after vehicle fires and chainsawing trees knocked down by storms. Every couple of years, the Susquehanna River overflows its banks, and Pioneer No. 1 is called to evacuate residents and pump out their basements.

Marietta's active firefighters include a truck driver, mechanic, retail clerk, roofer, warehouse supervisor, and several plant workers. None of them works in Marietta. "People don't live where they work, or work where they live," says Mann. "In the old days, the alarm would go off and the guy at the hardware and the guy at the dry cleaner would jump in their cars and race to the firehouse. Now a lot of businesses don't even allow their employees to leave work to fight a fire."

There are several programs designed to reverse the downward spiral. In the Pittsburgh area, full scholarships to the Community College of Allegheny County are offered to recruits and members. Several fire companies, such as Colonial Park near Harrisburg, offer college students free living space as a means of staffing their firehouses around the clock. A new Pennsylvania law gives volunteers a $100 state tax credit, and there are bills before the legislature that would give tax credits to businesses employing volunteers and provide tuition aid to students who volunteer.

"These are great ideas, and they will help stem the outward tide," says Mann. "But the longer-range solutions are that local governments, who are legally responsible for providing fire protection, are going to have to kick in more money, and the departments are going to have to surrender some of their autonomy, to consolidate so they run more efficiently. There are too many areas in Pennsylvania where you can play bingo every night and buy barbecued chicken every weekend. We're competing with each other."

The survival of the volunteer fire department has enormous implications for Pennsylvania. A 2004 state Senate report estimated that volunteer firefighters save taxpayers $6 billion a year.

Since Benjamin Franklin founded what is believed to be America's first volunteer department in Philadelphia in 1736, the real enigma about firefighters has not been why they wear red suspenders, but why they do it in the first place. At Pioneer No. 1 in Marietta, Merrell muses and shrugs. "I guess it's our way of giving back to our community."