Fire departments shift toward paid crews

Published 12:41 pm Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Pressed to cope with the ballooning population, greater demands for service and tougher training requirements, many fire departments in Snohomish County are gradually turning away from a traditionally volunteer force.

A handful of districts still rely on an all-volunteer crew, said Eric Andrews, fire chief at Snohomish County Fire District 26 in Gold Bar.

The all-volunteer department currently boasts 60 crew members, Andrews said. Some want to give back to their community; many want to get training and experience as firefighters or medics before applying to professional departments, Andrews said.

One thing is for sure, he said. “They are definitely not in it for the money.”

While firefighting is moving away from its volunteer roots, it’s still a mix around the county, Andrews said.

Roughly 800 career firefighters and 700 volunteers currently serve Snohomish County, officials said.

As is true for many other departments, volunteers in Gold Bar are technically partially paid personnel. They get $1.45 per call and modest compensation for driving a patient to a hospital or teaching a CPR class.

Andrews’ day job is assistant fire chief for Snohomish County Fire District 7 in Clearview, a department mostly served by full-time staff.

Departments staffed full-time face different challenges than all-volunteer departments, Andrews said. For the former, a big job is keeping union firefighters content. Volunteer departments need to convince people to continue donating their time.

The fire district in Gold Bar serves some 6,500 people. On weekends, when scores of tourists flock to the area’s outdoor attractions, the district’s temporary population easily swells to 25,000, Andrews said.

Summers are the busiest: The terrain near Gold Bar along U.S. 2 attracts hikers, bikers, rafters and other people who seek out activities where something easily can go wrong, Andrews said. Firefighters are trained for plucking people off rock cliffs, pulling them out of water and performing rope rescues. “It’s a real challenge for us,” he said.

But the volunteers know what they are doing, Andrews said. In Gold Bar, they receive the same training as full-time firefighters. The department has been able to attract and keep volunteers in part because of good training opportunities.

Four people are on duty at the Gold Bar station and the rest are on call, Andrews said. When a call goes out, the goal is to get the people on duty to respond within four or five minutes. “The weekdays are our weak points,” Andrews said, when volunteers are out working their day jobs.

The department also provides medic service to the Stevens Pass area.

Andrews’ crew answers about 1,000 calls a year — a lot for an all-volunteer department, he said.

In comparison, Everett Fire Department responds to about 19,000 calls annually, assistant fire chief Joe Johnston said. The department employs 181 career firefighters and has no volunteers, in part because of an arrangement with the firefighters’ union, he said.

Many large departments are staffed entirely by paid firefighters or are heavily weighted toward full-time staff. Snohomish County Fire District 1, covering south Snohomish County, started out with a volunteer force and added paid personnel as the number of calls went up, district spokeswoman Leslie Hynes said. Now, the department has 14 volunteers, who help with nonemergency business, and 160 full-time firefighters.

Along with more rigorous and time-consuming training requirements, expectations are becoming more demanding, said Brian McMahan, assistant fire chief in Mukilteo. “It used to be OK to wait 15 minutes for firefighters to get to your house. Now, if it’s more than six, people start to question it,” he said.

The desire for quick response is balanced by money, McMahan said. The yearly budget for one of the Mukilteo fire stations is just under $2 million. Personnel expenses make up about 80 percent of that cost, he said. The department uses a mix of full-time and reserve staff.

The picture is different in Snohomish County Fire District 28 in Index. The department’s entire budget is less than $200,000, said Assistant Fire Chief Ernie Walters, the district’s sole paid firefighter.

Index wouldn’t mind hiring more employees, but that’s just not realistic, Walters said.

“With all the demands for volunteers … it’s becoming a pretty big burden for them,” he said. “Career people are more dependable. It’s a more reliable service.”

Katya Yefimova: 425-339-3452, kyefimova@heraldnet.com.