(Hu)ManPower! ...and the search for community engagement
fire departments suffer as active members grow older & new recruits are hard to find
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My Dronechoir is happening in upstate New York on Monday, February 16th promptly at 3pm at the The Masonic, 8 Park Row, Chatham, NY 12037 (map). It’s a 40ish-minute performance. Thanks to PS21 for inviting me to present this project I’ve been shepherding since 2015! I hope to see you there :)
FEB 16th SHOW INFO — MAP — A DRONECHOIR EXPLAINER
If you’re local to upstate New York, you can scroll to the end of this newsletter for an update on Becraft Fire Station that I wrote about in the last installment of Arone Dyer’s Cornucopia.
When the most dangerous thing isn’t the potential fire, but that the fire department doesn’t show up
It’s snowing today! Yay. I love snow. However, it means a lot of activity for First Responders.1 Sometimes all the activity outpaces the ability of our volunteers to respond.
I joined the Fire Department in 2024 amidst a swirling rumor that membership has been dwindling, but I wasn’t attuned to what the membership used to be.2 In my ride-alongs, it seemed fine and typical that three to five of us would be on a truck for a call, even if it could fit ten. But on days like this—a snowy weekday morning, the flu running wild through everyone’s face-holes—you get a scary situation: I just answered a call and was one of TWO people that showed up to the station. The other member who showed up has years of experience, and happens to be retired, which is pretty typical for those who are available at this time in the morning. We waited for others to show up, but with only the two of us, we weren’t allowed to pull the truck out.
Not enough Manpower!
The call was for an Alarm Activation at the hospital. Thankfully, it proved to be a false alarm, but what would have happened if it was a real, fire-based emergency?
On top of these seasonal woes, the Greenport Fire Department has been experiencing a lack of camaraderie, with distrust between stations, and some members on edge around each other. Active members are growing older, and new recruits are hard to find.
Here’s Tracy who’s been volunteering for thirty-five years:
Are there just not enough Tracys around these days?
Other departments in Columbia County are definitely feeling the same pressure as mine. Last week, I was listening to the Dispatch & Response channel3 on my pager, and overheard that the department in Craryville, New York couldn’t respond to a Lift Assist4 call due to lack of manpower. Apparently only one FireFighter showed up. And every time I pass through the town of Clermont, I see their department’s lit-up sign saying MEMBERS NEEDED. That’s not members wanted, folks, it’s needed. They average ninety calls per year.5 That’s not a lot, but it’s enough that it puts a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of just a few.
Rural life means showing up for your community & yeah I’m looking at you
With the influx of city people retiring to the tranquil hills and treescapes of Columbia County, I think it’s important to focus on this very different aspect of rural life: which is that if you are not contributing to your community in a tangible way, the century-old organizations which offer us a kind of safety net could fail at the worst time.
My department has sixty-seven “active” members.6 About thirty will actually answer calls on a semi-regular basis. That is low. On any given call, members of that core group will be busy with school, or away on vacation, or simply working at a hard job on which they’re unable to leave at the drop of a hat. (Myself included! In the warmer months, I work as a landscaper, and am often just too far away to be able to respond during the day.)
Ok so here’s my pitch.
I’ve joined my department’s new Recruitment Committee which was recently started up by Antonio Gambino, a younger member of Station 3. (👋 Antonio!)
Our goal is to get the word out that we need to recruit more longterm active members. Like Jessica, who is my personal shero:
In the first meeting of the Recruitment Committee we came to the conclusion that isolation is a big problem for finding new members of the fire department. The majority of volunteers joined through family members being in the organization in one way or another.
To be clear there are rare birds… Like Jessica, above, and like another member of Greenport Fire Department, Morgan, who joined because his house caught fire and the GFD was there to save the day. Or myself, also a rare bird, who is driven by civic-minded curiosity and adventurousness. (Not gonna lie: part of my reason for joining the fire department is because I chose to stop riding my motorcycle due to a crash7 and wanted something else dangerous to keep me on my toes.)
From our 2nd Assistant Chief, Chris Pierro, who joined in 1996:
Membership started dwindling as society morphed. People driving out of area to work, working multiple jobs, both members in [the] household now work so childcare draws more attention, the sheer amount of regulations and “requirements” deter new members…. You have to really want to help strangers with no expectation in return other than perhaps the personal feeling of doing a good deed…. and you know firsthand the physical effort and continuing training that goes along with serving as an emergency responder. The trick is selling that workload to a prospective applicant… We do so much more than fight fires.
From my experience, it’s been incredibly fun, engaging, educational, and deeply rewarding. Yes it’s a lot of time spent on reading, skill development, and doing drills, and there’s so much to learn. But it’s challenging in a way where I can see an attainable end goal. And it’s exciting! I mean, come on—we rush towards alarm activations prepared to encounter fire, or to automobile accidents, prepared to extricate injured passengers. My evenings spent in class were rewarding in and of themselves, simply because I learned these tangible skills and built trust and respect for a community I’ve been cautioned (as a progressive) to question. It took about a year for me to become familiar with the calls and responsibilities, and get comfortable with my new Fire Family. I’m still learning all the information necessary when answering a call, but as with everything, it gets easier with practice. And, it’s true, the family aspect is strong.
Here’s another of our younger members, Dêjuan:
The members above joined for different reasons, but they all point back to the same basic idea: In times like these, when it feels like the world is shaped by the whims of billionaires and broligarchs, the collective still matters. I’m originally from Minnesota, and as disturbing as it’s been to watch the ICE crisis unfold there, it’s been equally encouraging to see the community push back, and start to win? (Fingers crossed.)
Volunteering with a local organization, like the Fire Department, is a way to weave that kind of community engagement into the very fabric of your daily life. That’s the main point I’d like to leave you with: serving your fellow citizens on the regular creates a huge sense of community and individual pride.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me about community engagement. Whether you’re a local that lives near me and wants to explore joining my department,8 or you live in some far off place, and want a cheerleader to get you more engaged with a different kind of local organization, I’m here for you!
To return to where I started this post…hyping my upcoming Dronechoir performance! Where many individuals show up, big collective feelings and big collective power follows. If you can make it to upstate New York, I hope to see you on February 16th.
Here are easy links to the earlier installments of my journey into firefighting.
Pt 1: from Freak to Firefighter — Training for the volunteer firefighting squad in a tiny upstate New York town.
Pt 2: Paperwork! Gear! Hound Dog Heroes! — Initiation (hazing?) in the volunteer fire fighter style
Pt 3: Fast Forward FireFighter! — Learning to fight fires without losing my politics
Pt 4: Interior Complex — Eight weeks of interior fire fighting operations classes
Update: Good News Bear for Becraft!
In my last installment, I alluded to the rather contentious vote that would either make or break the Town of Greenport’s Becraft Station, and potentially the entire department.
For the past two years, I’ve served as a Polling Inspector for the two public votes our Fire Department hosts each year. On December 9th, what started as a tense-seeming voting day on social media—with one or two especially vocal naysayers shouting into the empty, echoing cavern that is Facebook—ended with an onslaught of voters pouring into (and out of) the station.
For context: at both votes last year, at most 65 people showed up. This time we had 253 voters.
I was the only person checking names and addresses at the entrance. Even though I’m (self-proclaimed) quite quick at finding a name, the line grew and grew until it stretched out the door and into the cold December night. We truly had no idea so many people would show up, and we’d set up too close to the front of our large meeting room—which, in hindsight, was ridiculous. We could have made room for everyone to get out of the cold. Still, despite the tight quarters, people waited patiently and voted.
Most of the evening was cordial and calm, and I saw many faces I hadn’t expected. A big reason for the turnout was one focused Becraft member who took the day off to phone-bank, speaking directly with 150 neighbors. (Good work, Jeff!)
The worry for the department was that if the Becraft building isn’t updated, it will be condemned and taken out of service. The station’s members wouldn’t simply be reassigned elsewhere within Greenport. More likely they’d move on to other municipalities outside our regular service range, like Livingston or Germantown. The lower portion of Greenport covers a much larger geographic area than the Eastern or Northern districts, so many Becraft members live farther south in Columbia County. When we’re starting with only about ten active members per station—meaning those who regularly respond to calls—losing that group could have reduced our active department membership by as much as one-third, placing a major burden on whoever remained.
There’s also the insurance issue. Homeowners’ insurance rates could rise, or policies could become harder to obtain, if insurers dropped coverage within Becraft’s response area. While Stations 1 and 3 can cover the southern district, response times would almost certainly suffer due to the increased distance.
Back at the polls, a large group of firefighters stayed to hear the vote tally. It seemed like most people were hoping for a yes vote, though it’s sometimes hard to read the room. When 130 yes votes were reached—the minimum needed to pass—most of the men in the room (these gatherings are still 90–95% men) clapped and cheered. I was focused on inspecting the tally, so I hadn’t noted if anyone had a negative reaction.
As chairs were being stacked and tables cleared, one firefighter made a comment along the lines of, “Don’t help those guys [in Station 1] clean up—they never do anything for us.” That understandably upset some Station 1 members, including people who had voted YES in Becraft’s favor. It led to a loud, uncomfortable argument that was encouraged to move outside. When stations don’t integrate socially, distrust grows. I’m not the only member who wishes we would change that.
All of this is to say: what’s good for one station is good for the whole department. I’m grateful the vote passed and that Becraft can move forward with the next stages of this much-needed work.
True story: the leading cause of power outages in my part of upstate New York is automobile encounters with electric poles.
In 2008, our department had over 100 active members. At this point membership fluctuates between 65 and 75. According to our Fire Chief, Mark Taylor: “We lose some and gain some. It has been a slow decline. Members moving away, aging out, being scared off by or losing interest due to antiquated leadership.” (He’s referring to the leadership he pushed out when he was voted in as Chief.)
The Dispatch and Response channel is how a First Responder can hear what emergencies are happening in the entire county, not just in one municipality. The dispatchers call out for EMS, Fire, or Police to respond to their assigned emergencies, as well as announce systemwide tests, apparatus statuses (such as when an apparatus is out for repairs), or road closures that may effect emergency routes.
Firefighter Lift Assists are non-emergency services provided to help individuals—often elderly or mobility-impaired—who have fallen and cannot get up on their own.
Compare ninety calls per year for Clermont to Greenport’s average of 360, and then to Schenectady’s paid Fire Department handling 20,000 calls annually, and it starts to make sense why some departments are all-volunteer while others are paid.
Thank you for joining me in ‘the weeds’ as I explain what it means to be an “active” member. It used to be that members had to answer 10% of the calls each year to be considered active. In my department that would be around forty calls annually. Now that 10% only counts towards the LOSAP (Length of Service Award Program) which provides retirement- or pension-like benefits as an incentive to recruit and retain volunteers. Yet you can be called “active” if you only attend the minimum required OSHA trainings, which amounts to somewhere around thirty hours of your time per year. This change was an attempt to retain members.
Even though it’s looked down upon, some members show up to the fire station for a call but rarely (if ever) suit up or get on the truck. I suspect this is out of habit for those folks who have been actively participating members for years, or due to older age, illness, or parental status. No matter—I’m sure it’s not an intentional grab for that hefty $250 property tax break at the end of the year.
Full gnarly details of my motorcycle accident at this Instagram post:
Homage to My Clavicle
Hard to believe, my dear, delicate collarbone that just 3 days ago we were touring our future residency at Kino Saito and marking 10,000 miles on our Moto Guzzi.
On the way home from all this love/fun on Saturday, I hit a deer and practiced flying at 60mph. Let me tell you, flying is NOT as fun as it sounds when you have to factor in the skill of landing. Birds make it look so easy!
All said and done this could've been a much worse accident and I'm thanking the stars that my broken collarbone is the worst of it.
Among those Stars are the kind folks in the emergency room at Columbia Memorial, the gentle people who stopped to help at milemarker 76.4, Trooper Slater, the ambulance EMTs. I'm sorry to the deer.
It has been an abnormally tumultuous year but what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.
My Department putting out the call:
