4 in 4 or 20 in 10?

[KCRD 6]

A good question deserves a good answer. My volunteer department has over 100 active members, lots of associates. Some serve out of family traditions, some are adrenaline junkies, some believe in community service. There are even a few souls who come for the food, and my heart goes out to them. Yes, some people love to parade and those people go to parades. The last time I was at a meeting, which is a while ago, there was grousing from the parade people that so few people were turning out, it was a always the same few. Long after one has put on a scott pack for the last time, one can don a uniform and shiny shoes to go marching for the cause.

For every hour out at a parade, dozens of hours are spent in house, polishing, gear checking, maintaining equipment. Towns are extremely well protected when everyone is in house on a detail. I even remember a mutual aid call where not only did we make filthy the parade truck and the parade rack, we could have won best dressed department to a running brush fire.

It is hard to prove a negative. I can say without reservation that in my 20 years as a volunteer, my department never put parading above fire fighting. I cannot think of a time where service suffered when a truck was out of town, be it maintenance or a parade and I can think of many times a designated crew on stand by cut response time. I can remember the dozens of times that I was asked to stay home and stay frosty. I can remember the day of a department golf outing we handled back to back structure fires with over 40 members at scene. I can remember the night of the 2000 New Year's Eve gala when, party notwithstanding, we mounted an outstanding attack on a propane fueled house fire with easily 50 members at scene.

A volunteer fire department is a social enterprize. It is also a large and dedicated fire fighting organization. What we lack in paid performance is more often than not made up in brute size. If for 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon we are down 10 deputy chiefs with a combined age of 750 and one truck.... we still have 7 trucks and 80 members home cutting grass. Parades aren't on held on weekdays.

Here is a pair of questions for our paid brothers: How many fire fighters does a paid truck get to the scene.... 4 or 5?

Can our paid brothers point out times when participation at a parade has actually resulted in a negative outcome for a community served by volunteers?

First of all, thank you for actually providing answers and not getting offended.

To answer your questions: It is been said said many times how many guys Yonkers brings to the scene but here a breakdown again. 4 engines - each w/4 members

2 Ladders - each w/4 members

Rescue - 4 members

Chief & aid - 2 members

Safety - 1 member

Thats 31 members arriving within 4-5 minutes of the call. If it sounds like a working fire, a 5th engine is usually started to roll at the chiefs discretion. I can not recall a time when a parade has had a negative on the community. The rig is O.O.S. for a short amount of time but can be ordered to go back in service within seconds. If someone else from YFD does recall a time when there was a negative outcome, please correct me.

Edited February 21, 2010 by KCRD

[JFLYNN 681]

A good question deserves a good answer. My volunteer department has over 100 active members, lots of associates. Some serve out of family traditions, some are adrenaline junkies, some believe in community service. There are even a few souls who come for the food, and my heart goes out to them. Yes, some people love to parade and those people go to parades. The last time I was at a meeting, which is a while ago, there was grousing from the parade people that so few people were turning out, it was a always the same few. Long after one has put on a scott pack for the last time, one can don a uniform and shiny shoes to go marching for the cause.

For every hour out at a parade, dozens of hours are spent in house, polishing, gear checking, maintaining equipment. Towns are extremely well protected when everyone is in house on a detail. I even remember a mutual aid call where not only did we make filthy the parade truck and the parade rack, we could have won best dressed department to a running brush fire.

It is hard to prove a negative. I can say without reservation that in my 20 years as a volunteer, my department never put parading above fire fighting. I cannot think of a time where service suffered when a truck was out of town, be it maintenance or a parade and I can think of many times a designated crew on stand by cut response time. I can remember the dozens of times that I was asked to stay home and stay frosty. I can remember the day of a department golf outing we handled back to back structure fires with over 40 members at scene. I can remember the night of the 2000 New Year's Eve gala when, party notwithstanding, we mounted an outstanding attack on a propane fueled house fire with easily 50 members at scene.

A volunteer fire department is a social enterprize. It is also a large and dedicated fire fighting organization. What we lack in paid performance is more often than not made up in brute size. If for 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon we are down 10 deputy chiefs with a combined age of 750 and one truck.... we still have 7 trucks and 80 members home cutting grass. Parades aren't on held on weekdays.

Here is a pair of questions for our paid brothers: How many fire fighters does a paid truck get to the scene.... 4 or 5?

Can our paid brothers point out times when participation at a parade has actually resulted in a negative outcome for a community served by volunteers?

Thank you for not taking this personally and engaging in honest debate.

First, I would like to ask you not to make this thread out as some sort of battle or comparison between career (what you refer to as "paid") and volunteer firefighters / fire departments. It was not intended as such. To elaborate a bit on my problem with you referring to career firefighters as "paid", I would remind you that it is volunteers who often insist on being referred to as professional and I have always understood the point. You most certainly can be professional regardless of whether or not you are a career member. By the same token, you can be unprofessional even if you are doing something as your career. However, career firefighters are not the only firefighters who are paid as we have discussed in the past...many volunteer firefighters accept pay in the way of pensions, tax breaks and many other financial and other benefits.

Again, I appreciate you providing specific information in regard to how the parade issue affestc your department and the public you are sworn to protect and I will take you at your word. However, from what I can tell, this is still a very serious issue with many, if not most, volunteer departments who choose to participate in parades, as attested to by many volunteer firefighters right here on this website.

Also, in just now rereading your post as welll as KCRD's, I am reminded of the importance of there being an adequate response of trained firefighters in the initial stages of a fire. Counting the number of responders who actually showed up at some point during a fire is not really an accurate indicator of the effectiveness of the response. You mentioned several incidents wherein you gave numbers of Firefighters who responded...do you have numbers for the actual number of fully qualified interior firefighters who showed up in, say, the first eight minutes after the original 911 call was made?

I really do appreciate your post. It was a breath of fresh air. However, sometimes things arre really not as they seem. I really do believe that you truly believe that "what we lack in paid (career) performance is more often than not made up for in brute size", I'm just not convinced.