'I have never seen this in my 30 years,' East Hartford, CT, Assistant Chiefs of Applicants, Volunteers

Fire officials across the state are raising concerns about fewer applicants and volunteers joining the ranks of fire departments amid long-term financial concerns and health risks of the profession.

In an example of the thinning ranks, the town of East Hartford is spending $2.8 million so far this year for overtime for its firefighters to make up for a shortfall of 11 vacancies in the department.

In the past two years 26 firefighters have retired from the department now staffed at 103 members.

East Hartford Assistant Fire Chief Stephen Alsup said the department is recruiting actively to replace those positions but it finds itself like other departments in the state facing new challenges: Half the number of applicants that used to seek the jobs are applying to become firefighters, making it harder to fill such positions.

“I have never seen this in my 30 years,” Alsup said. “We have always had an overabundant number of applicants.”

“Benefits are not what they used to be”

A study from the Office of the State Comptroller on fire departments shows that the number of firefighters in the state has dropped by at least 50% since 2016-17.

Fire and state officials cite a crisis with the retention and recruitment of firefighters explaining that inadequate pension and benefits remain top concerns, particularly in a dangerous profession with increased calls, more training requirements and fewer interest in volunteering.

As a result, fire departments are left to rely more on mutual aid and overtime of its firefighters, with concerns that this will lead to more burnout, officials said.

“The amount of people who are signing up to put their life on the line is decreasing because in many ways the benefits are not what they used to be,” said state Comptroller Sean Scanlon.

Scanlon led the study, explaining his personal interest as a grandson of a firefighter and hearing from different fire departments that they did not feel there was progress with recruitment and retention of firefighters.

“A lot of times today people who sign up for these jobs are promised 401ks and sometimes they are not even promised really good health insurance,” he said.

“You have a young person sitting there saying why would I sign up for this really dangerous job if the one thing that made that dangerous job palatable maybe for my dad and grandfather who were in this business was the secure retirement and the benefits that they deserve to do this dangerous job,” Scanlon said.

“A lot of towns are in crisis because over the last 10 to 15 years many have moved away from good benefits and a pension.”

The report states that since 2016-17 there were an estimated 26,800 firefighters, down 50% compared to the latest data last year showing there were 13,401 firefighters in the state.

Volunteer firefighters make up the majority of firefighters in the state currently at 8,337, with the remaining 4,738 career firefighters.

While the number of career firefighters increased by 6.5% since 2016-17, the number of volunteer firefighters dropped by 62.7% compared to 2016-17, the study found.

Retention and recruitment

Peter Brown, president of the Uniformed Professional Fire Fighters Association of Connecticut, which represents under 4,000 career firefighters, said on the recruitment side he has seen the number of applicants testing for his department across the state dwindle down.

“When I got into the fire department in 1997, 1000 people applied and now departments are seeing 100 to 200. Some places are exhausting their hiring lists before they expire. They run out of people that are eligible to be hired.”

Brown said another challenge is when a firefighter gets hired some will observe what the makeup and pay is and then jump around until they find a department they like.

“When you get someone it is hard to lock them in for a career when they are bouncing from two to three departments,” he said.

Further, Brown concurred with Scanlon that pay and benefits have diminished, another contributing factor to recruitment.

“If we do not have a pipeline that is refreshing those ranks and getting people interested and we do not have good uniformed benefits across the board in different cities and towns this problem will get worse and worse,” Scanlon said.

Alsup said the applicant pool is shrunk further in East Hartford because applicants must also be certified as paramedics. But he emphasized there are still qualified candidates.

The desire to pursue such a career has shifted, he added.

“Firefighting is hard,” he said. “It takes dedication. The folks that come up in our recruitment are dedicated to this job. I think you look at the shift away from trades and a push toward college.”

Glastonbury Fire Chief Michael Thurz said some people are experiencing burnout.

“Do you want to get up in the middle of the night for nothing and answer an automatic fire alarm?” he said. “You have to decide to do that and a willingness to do that. The family has to understand what is going on in the middle of the night.”

Avon Fire Chief Bruce Appell said the hardest part of retention is keeping people happy and motivated and engaged.

“It is a tough business,” he said. “It is the stress of what we do and the things that we see.”

Making the commitment

Fire officials said the number of volunteers have dropped in the department with lifestyle changes and more time commitments elsewhere making it hard to join the ranks.

Coventry Fire Chief Bud Meyers, who also serves as president of the Connecticut Fire Chiefs Association, said the responsibilities of firefighters has also increased from additional training to departments now responding to medical calls and addressing hazardous materials.

“It is hard for people to associate the time away from the family like they used to,” he said. “And a lot of families because of the way the economy is both parents are working and to offset the cost they don’t have the ability to volunteer as readily as they used to.”

Thurz said in Glastonbury, which is a volunteer department, he has 70 people volunteering but it does not mean they will all become available if there is a large fire because of people’s other obligations.

“You don’t know when you are going to be called upon and If I am going to dinner with my family I am not taking my family to a call,” he said describing the life of volunteer firefighters.

Alsup said volunteerism is down including participation in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

Further, Scanlon said many who have volunteered in the fire service are moving on to jobs as career firefighters, reducing the number of volunteers.

Appell, which has a volunteer fire department in Avon, also holding steady at 70, said people need to step up and join the department.

“Less people are joining and everyone is aging out,” he said. “They can’t do that job anymore.”

The fire service years ago was more generational with family members following in the footsteps of their parents. This is now not as common, fire officials said.

Cancer

With cancer the No 1 killer of firefighters in the service, with 75% of line of duty deaths due to occupational cancer, some people do not have an interest in the profession, preferring not to take the risk.

Studies have shown over the years that “PFAS, Per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of fluorinated chemicals known as “forever chemicals” were found in all three layers of firefighter turnout gear, “linked to cancer and other serious health effects,” according to the IAFF.

“When I started in 1997 there was very little talk of cancer,” Brown said. “I think you saw the cancer boom somewhere in the 2000s up until today with the introduction of PFAS chemicals in the turnout gear.”

Alsup said certainly the risks are there.

“Firefighting has always been inherently risky whether the dangerousness of the job and cardiac and cancer and those types of things,” he said.

But he said his department has done a lot to mitigate those risks, including testing PFAS free gear and removing PFAS foam from its trucks.

The department also provides free yearly health screenings to its firefighters.

Mutual aid

With fire departments having fewer firefighters, Meyers said they are forced to rely on mutual aid more frequently.

“What ends up happening is the less you have for manpower gives more of the workload on the members of the department who are still around and when you do that it puts more of a burden on them and creates burnout,” he said. “The average volunteer stays three to five years in the fire departments.”

Solutions

Scanlon said the state is not doing enough to market a career in firefighting to young people.

“If we were to put some resources into that like we do for other professions we would see more people getting interested,” he said. “But we can’t build the infrastructure for a marketing campaign and not have the other problems addressed.

In Rocky Hill, there is a waiting list to join the volunteer fire department with 72 firefighters serving in the community.

“One of the best things that we did, believe it or not, was…signs we got during election season,” to alert people about volunteering, said Rocky Hill Fire Chief Michael Garrahy.

Scanlon oversees the health insurance plans for many municipalities known as the Partnership Plan and the pension plan known as MERS.

“What I am trying to do through the plans that I run is offer towns an affordable way to provide those kinds of benefits to their employees,” he said. “If you see more towns doing that this problem will get better and if we market more you will get more people applying.”

Brown said as he approaches the end of his career he is working with young people and trying to address the problem through legislation including bills that increase recruitment and retention in the fire service.

“We really got to figure out what the root problem is and do what we can to promote the profession,” he said. “It is a great profession and a noble calling and I do not want to think about the prospect of not being able to recruit enough firefighters to fill all these positions down the road.”