Thank you for all your great video's. YES volunteer is a big problem. My Humble opinion from years of working with a Explorer/ Cadet program with the local Volunteer Department is you get to weed out the ones that might be interested then drop out. The volunteers don't put a lot of time into the Fire Department TRAINING, then LOSS the volunteers. Are Cadets do REHAB so on any big Fire they go if Paramedic go. They work with the Paramedic on the Rest period for Firefighter. The Local school district is also very helpful on having a skills program, with school District. The Cadet program you can get the younger age highschool kids involved. It does save the volunteer Department, not having a big turn around of members.
In Slovenia, 90% of fire service is based ob volunteers. They are well trained for all sorts of situations, fires, road accidents, hazmats, bad weather… They are not paid, its more like a passion for them. Volunteer firefighting is our countrys pride. They recently tackled the biggest forest fire in countrys history. Some departments were on the field for days, even two weeks, more shifts straigt. Thankfuly help came from other countries with their airforces.
As a retired medivac helicopter pilot, I worked with a number of volunteer fire departments in some pretty rural areas. They have always been dedicated to their mission and always eager to learn. My hat is off to all the volunteer firefighters around the world.
Over 100 hours flight observer. FLIR, NODS, NAME IT!!! Coolest position ever! Pilot, ex Vietnam War Helo pilot... He let me take the stick one night... I don't know how they do it!!!! I was a train wreck!!!!
I spent 20 years as a volunteer. I live in central Vermont. Due to the fact that most depts in VT are volunteer, we have a massive mutual aid system. It was nothing to see 4 or 5 depts on a scene. When a MA dept goes to a fire, the depts behind them come in to cover the towns that came to the fire scene. Some depts would travel 20 miles or more for station coverage. A strong mutual aid system is essential for a small state like Vermont
We do the exact same thing in Indiana, but we may have 10-12 departments on scene if we're shuttling water, which for a large fire is almost always. We have absolutely GREAT mutual aid departments and we train together often.
Best wishes from a German volunteer firefighter. I don't think we have a thankless job. Some people are smiling about us, when we do training at the station. But everybody who we could help, when a call was needed, was very thankfully.
We where recently hit by a tornado in Paderborn and I am sure our two full-time fire stations would have been totally lost for days responding to all the calls. Glad we had all the help available from neighboring volunteer fire stations.
I'm from Austria. Volunteer firefighters here are a social event, integrated into the rural community and that's why it works. Same with Red Cross. But when you go into an urban city these concepts don't work.
In Luxemburg it used to be, since firfighting became state business and not anymore municipality business, it changed. There was a big loss of volunteers (a good chunk went to professional as they were hiring many) but nevertheless many stopped because all of the annoyence the direction of the CGDIS created. I used to be allowed to leave on work time and keep getting paid (because the CGDIS would refund my salary) but because of the giant administrative bullshit, my boss does not allow me any more to leave on work time, this means when I leave I have to clock out and will not be paid a salary, and the lost time i will have to recatch as overtime/saturday. There is also big issues with the trainings, most of them are nowadays done during the week, and as you can guess it is pretty hard to get approval to get holidays for it when you are required at least to ask them 2! months in advance (used to be 1) and often the weekend ones get canceled (in this year alone 4 or 5 formations i was registered for had been canceled. It has been a very loud and long topic already that in Luxemburg the direction of the CGDIS is aiming for a completly professionallized fire fighting but the question will be: who is going to pay all those firefighters their 4k+ salaries? If already the minimum needed to head out in the firetrucks are 4? In a municipality like mine where in average 2 interventions per month happen and there is a ~60% chance it getting canceled, this is a no brainer that it is a waste of money and human time.
@@GriderTornado totally stupid. Motivation of volunteers is higher and they are cheaper, even if their salary in their daily job gets refunded. Saved money can be spent on equipment. In my personal opinion only the leader of a station should be paid by the government to have better influence on what people aware doing.
volunteer fire departments in germany are great they run the jounior firefighter "clubs" and with out the ffs a lot of emergencys could ended up pretty badly
As a retired police officer from a small town in Pa Ive never felt more proud of anyone than the volunteer fire fighters. To me, no one is derserving of more thanks than them. People used to thank me for my service and Id tell them thank you but the volunteer firefighters of our community deserve the real thanks and most importantly, donations. My only regret is not having done more for them than I had.
My family is from Bradford County, PA. My father was a Professional Firefighter here in Maryland. I'm a retired Game Warden. Started FF 1, but covid shut it down. Many calls before covid, lots of overhaul
Hey mike, im a 17 year old junior volunteer who started back in march with my towns department. Your videos have been super helpful to me and helped keep me interested and passionate about the job. The day of my interview I remember finding your interview guide video and went down a rabbit hole watching all your videos. Joining my department has been the best decision i ever made and your channel has helped me a lot so thank you and keep up the great videos Also my department uses Active911 and i can vouch that its incredibly useful
You're The Donut Operator of The Fire Service. I've seen a few of your videos, and I love the way you break down videos of fires, and how you've also gone out of your way to give us advice on interview Do's and Dont's. You've also given your opinions on tactics Firefighters have used in videos, which helps a hopeful FF like myself get a understanding of how things could be done. I've already learned a variety of things from you and your videos, and I haven't known of your channel for that long. Thank you for the knowledge and advice you've given us, wether we want to be FFs or not.
Thank you for this. I was a volunteer for 17 years, rising to Captain more due to availability than ability (I was not allowed to run for Chief because I lived out of district) and daytime weekday fires were the worst for attendance, our town had automatic mutual aid for the 5 departments in town, and special arrangements with some of the surrounding districts. One time I arrived at the firehouse just a minute or so after the siren started to blow, I pulled the first response pumper out on the apron and geared up while waiting for other responders, after a few minutes, I called dispatch and rolled, by myself. I arrived at the scene, turned up the pump to 125, pulled off the first attack lines and got water on the fire before anyone else even showed up. A scary feeling.
@@ffjsb And I would agree with you. Part of the reason I quit was a "difficulty" with the chief. The chief and I had been friends from the time he was a captain, and I was a new kink chaser, the chief's wife and my wife had been friends for 5 years before we married, we went on a couple of vacation trips as a foursome and had even spent the night at each other's houses when a dinner party got a little too drunk to drive home safely. They attended our wedding, and they came to our vow renewal at our tenth wedding anniversary, but there was trouble in their paradise. When she left him, she stayed at our house for two nights as she made her escape. I don't know how he found out, but life at the fire department became unbearable - one time we were just wetting down an abandoned building that we were making no attempt to save, and two of our firefighters were manning a hose line without proper safety gear (we still had some rubber coats even, so a while ago) and I, as captain, told them to shut down their line and get helmets, gloves, and boots on. They were from Company 1 and I was from Company 2 and one of them went to the chief and complained that I was rude, and I caught hell. The following month was our election of officers and I declined to run for re-election as captain or as lieutenant, and two months later, after another confrontation with the chief, I resigned from the department. A couple of years later the chief's now ex-wife told us that he had found out, and it became clear why the animosity, but it was too late to do anything about it.
Thank you for reviewing my video. I'm just seeing this and wondered why viewer traffic increased a few months ago. I appreciate your comment about being impressed by the turnout considering it happened around 6:30 pm that evening, you know a majority of these volunteer ff were probably just sitting down to have dinner. There's quite a bit of negative comments on my video about why there's so many ff standing on the lawn "doing nothing". Most, if not all, of the departments in my county use IAmResponding, which is a similar app to Active911
I'm from that area where this fire happened and I love what you said about volunteer attendance. Yes, most departments where I'm from are extremely lucky to get a rig out with a full crew. I know my department and other surrounding departments are the same way. However, with most volunteer departments, everyone will come out when they hear there's a fire
This was an amazing response from so many different volunteer departments. Water on fire right away, the number of First Responders unbelievable. Lots of hustle from responders, with a wide variety of fire equipment on scene too. Anyone would be proud to have the firefighters respond to their homes.
thanks, ffN. i really appreciate youtube channels that go the extra mile and put work into the video description. i know not everyone is interested or can access it (my pc died yesterday and i had to watch via tablet) but as soon as you mentioned building construction types, i wanted to know more about it. thanks for the link! 👍
Love your videos! As a volunteer firefighter for the past 3 years. Hearing breakdowns of real scenario calls from a veteran career firefighter have been awesome to learn from. As a general request, breakdowns from other types of calls, ie. medical or auto ex would be great to see as well. Thanks again
Every volunteer team I've ever seen has been top notch. Usually they had higher turnouts than needed for any sort of fire call. Thee's so much unspoken bravery of the men and women who compromise our volunteer departments, and many of them have been more dedicated than the paid staff in larger cities I've lived in over the years.
another reason why so many FF's (at end of video), simply because mutual aid will draw a lot of FF's... the issue (in my opinion) of volunteer fire service is "initial response" (first in) units,... as you pointed out, staffing 24/7 is impossible (a few exceptions in the east coast), so, first units will be with at best 3 man crew... add to this the distance between fire stations and mutual aid response, quick placement of fire hoses is very difficult (and rarely quick as stated).. i admire the dedication of volunteers (thumbs up)
I stretched my first line back in the 80's with a full time metro FD until I retired at 30 years. About halfway through my career our city lifted the residence requirements so my wife and I moved out of the metro and into a mountain community served with a VFD that I also joined and am still at today. We have about two dozen members that show up regularly for training, and about a dozen that can be counted on to respond somewhat regularly. So there are often calls where only a few manage to show up and we are left to work with just a small crew. This past weekend we had 4 MVA's and only 4-5 people responded to each, so it can be tough quite often. A big issue for us is the drive time due to long travel distance in and around the mountains. It can take 20-30 minutes to get to a call in our primary area, calls out on the highway can take more than an hour to reach because how vast the area is. Earlier this year we had a family of four killed when a drunk driver in a company truck crossed the CL and plowed into them head on. It took me 45 minutes in our Squad (our fastest vehicle) to reach the site, a deputy happened to be about 15 minutes away and found everything burning out of control, all we could do was cut out their remains.
My department only has 10 volunteers total with 3 active EMTs. We are doing GOOD to get 4 people to turn up for just about any call including MVCs (in my county in Oregon we are not allowed to call them MVAs anymore as it COULD be taken as an expert calling the crash an accident and no one at fault). Anyway totally agree that with the videos stated 3 top problems and hope all the other VFDs can hang in there like us and make it work. Stay safe and do good things everyone!
Awesome that the driver of the first arriving engine left room for the truck. I've seen too many videos and experienced it too many times firsthand that the truck gets blocked out, or the truck gets into a good position only to have someone nose up behind them and block access to their ground ladders.
I am a firefighter in Hamilton township New Jersey. Our department has worked along side with Franklin township. They are great. A lot of us in this township are volunteer we always show up to calls no matter what.
Aussie Volunteer here, good job done on that one, it was going that's for sure. My brigade is full volunteer urban and wildfire so have to deal with both and I agree, retention is a major issue and so is recruiting the right people.
I can attest to active 911, it is truly an amazing tool. We are paid on call and all have pagers but when your pager isn't on you, it died, or you accidentally left it off after work then you get all the information sent to you on your phone. It does have a slight delay but still helps tremendously in the fire service! It usually gives you more information than the original dispatch too. As well as timestamps for things such as time of call, dispatch time, en route time, on scene time, and clear time which make paperwork a breeze afterwards. 10/10, I'm glad they sponsored your channel!!
I could not agree more about the issues with volunteer departments. My 65 year old father joined his VFD 4 years ago, 90% of the time he is the only one who shows up when they are toned out (over 30 on the roster)I am moving up there next month so I can work with him.
I'm at an urban vol station servicing an area of 25k and about 45k in the summer. We have about 60 members and are part of a state-wide agency with about 1,200 stations and 50k active volunteers. Even with 60+ people at our station we have been struggling because throughout covid a number of our senior members left for work and such in other areas. Probably lost close to 100 years of experience. We train very well and regularly but attendance to calls has dropped. We use to get 2 of our 4 vehicles the door in a few minutes (10 people). Now we are lucky if we get a full truck. It's getting better, but slowly.
In my volunteer days (late 80s) I worked night shift in a regional 911 center and ran calls during the day. I was a paramedic the fire district was only BLS at the time. We had lights/sirens in our personal vehicles (POVs). Our department SOP was to tone out backup stations during the day due to lack of manpower. We had 8 stations and in addition to all apparatus at my station I was qualified on the aerial (Pierce 75’ tandem-axle quint that was basically a crane with a good ladder, pump, hose, etc) in another station. Our daytime staffing (made up primarily of night shift workers) was a skeleton crew for our rather large district. (When I first started, my captain told me that for medical calls to never to go to the station for our rescue unless driving by, but to respond directly to the scene. We didn’t run all medical stuff, maybe half.) Anyway, I can’t tell you how many times I ran calls taking our engine solo to fire alarms and small-ish fires, other stations doing the same. But when we got a real structure fire suddenly we had plenty of personnel who all responded in their POVs. That always angered me. You need apparatus to fight fires and we didn’t have enough “regular responders” to get proper equipment to fire scenes. I won’t air much dirty laundry, but I had to quit after the department made Inside Edition for its Christmas parties and even worse I followed a chief (who was in a department vehicle) that was under the influence to a fire! Several friends I served with became paid firefighters and I actually went into law enforcement. I’m disabled now and miss those days horribly even with the shenanigans that went on!
Less than a year to go and I receive my Fire Services Exemplary Service Medal from the Canadian Government for 20 years of volunteer firefighter service. Joined when I was 18. IMO our fire dept has the best group of guys you could ask for. Many more with 20, 30, even 40 + years of service on our dept.
I spent 50 years as a volunteer fireman and thoroughly enjoyed the experience , I still hang around the station and meet weekly with some former members. Our station has some of the best trained guys in the county who are very dedicated to serving, several of them work for paid fire department s .
In our department, we love active alert (911), it just that our county dispatch takes forever to send them out sometimes, and the pager goes off first. Active Alert is very useful, just not completely ready to be fully integrated as a stand alone service until the dispatchers make there end ready.
Being and staying volunteer is a major good feeling. My city is pushing 120,000 and estimated to double by 2025. Running soon to be 8 to 9 (depending on how the city growth dictates) stations. Still fully volunteer. Granted we have shifts that we can pick and choose to pick up that leaves at least one station station staffed at all times. But that feeling is great being able to maintain the ISO1 rating while being full volly in a city that many assume is fully paid. There's many a great men in this department that are well over twenty years of their life and free time sacrificed for this city. Couldn't ask for better men to look up to
@@ffjsb It's been volunteer since its founding almost 100 years ago. We all know going in there's no real money. We don't do it for the money, we do it for the sense of duty, brotherhood and simply it's fun. We do get stipends and yearly pay outs, so we definitely get a little something. By being volunteer, the city can use those funds and we all get free training through fire academies, whatever outside training we desire through any college or school. Any certifications we desire. Top of the line equipment and apparatuses. We are very blessed and take pride as I said being able to maintain an ISO 1 while staying volunteer and helping save our beautiful city money.
@@Ameri-Texan Tradition has nothing to do with it. You should be PAID to do that job. It's not like it's some rural district in N. Dakota or something. You can get that training with a paid FD too. Time for the community to step up and do what's right.
@@ffjsb I'll agree to disagree. It very much has to do with tradition within our department and its history. There's a massive push against the city from our members NOT to go paid. We wear that Volunteer on our logo with pride. Not to be conceited, but we maintain such good numbers and responses for that ISO 1 that an overwhelming amount of our citizens don't even realize we're fully volunteer. We love the fact that we're saving our city millions of dollars, saving our citizens who knows in taxes. We are happy to not receive a "full time" paycheck. In fact, with many members working in the local plants and refineries around here in Houston and many working for NASA, a vast majority would be taking a vast pay cut if we went full time.
our volunteer department had this same issue with attendance a bit ago, we had a call for a car fire and between our city department (the one i'm on) and our rural department we had 9 people show up for the call at 10am on a Monday and we attempted to call for another department but they didn't have anyone who could respond and thankfully we got it put out with just the 9 of us
Man this whole video relates directly to my combination department. Volunteers are crucial to impact on a scene and it seems like most of our weekly trainings consist of complaints of not enough attendance. This is incredible that they have such reliable resources
Attendance can be difficult. A volunteer department near where I lived had that problem. Its a city of around 5000. But a major fire they had at a commercial building only had 2 firefighters and the chief initially. Mutual aid helped but they had a minimal response and the chief did voice his frustration in that.
@@Jimmythefish577 i think after that fire the chief cleaned house or did something. My town is only 3000 and has about 20 to 25 volunteers at any time. Usually they get about 80% response. They do have an attendance policy for training and calls. If you miss so many you will be dismissed. I know you also have to inform the chief if you'll be out of town as well.
Retired, moved to a small town, joined the local volunteer fire department. Just like I did a career ago. Much more fun switching between structure calls and wildfire calls.
It’s refreshing to see a video and comments that recognize and appreciate a job well done. Typically no matter how you approach a scene there is a trend of criticizing everything. This can be a good thing if it is constructive but unfortunately most of the time it is not. On the flip side it is also nice to see good timely, effective firefighting by personnel who train hard. Well done.
I started with A-911 on my department, and the constant growth and updates have been astounding. I would not go with any other app for first response and notification...
We’ve been using Active-911 for two years now, great resource. We can see who’s responding, where they are and we can even allocate them to particular tasks on the fire ground.
my volunteer station we have people come in and then go career ones they get their certs. 1/2 said they only joined to get the certs to make it faster to get hired. others left said we do not get a house fire every day and run more medical calls than anything else. Im a volunteer for over 10 years and my county is doing everything they can to push us out and we see it.
It's impressive what equipment volunteer departments have back east. Don't see that anywhere around where I live. On another note, your first in engine could have positioned (if your department didn't have a stick to put up in the air) in front of the house and use the deck gun to get a knock on the main body of fire, wouldn't have been near as effective but it would help. Great videos as always!
Im a volunteer firefighter in the Netherlands, my departement uses a app called brandweer rooster in combination with a pager. It gives us the alarm in our phone and in the pager
@@britneygrant9773 there are “on-call” departments that will pay you for a certain amount of hours per the calls you attend. There are also volunteer departments that are strictly volunteer or give you minimal tax breaks. All depends on the department, if you are interested contact your local fire department and ask what type of department they are whether it’s full time, on-call/per diem, or volunteer.
To be fair, a daytime structure fire is always going to have a better turnout than a 3am automatic fire alarm or CO alarm. Any structure fire in a volly town is probably going to bring people out of the woodwork that haven't shown up to anything in months.
Our best turnouts were the middle of the night fires when most of our volunteers were home. Daytime responses were thin because most of us worked outside of our city. But a midnight structure fire often turned out 25-28 firefighters. A few years after I moved away the department became paid and they needed to dispatch 2 or 3 departments to get minimum personnel on the scene. Where I live now, there is only one paid department within 40 miles and they run an 8 man crew in two stations including two EMS units, two engines and a ladder. That leaves a two person fire crew at each station if the EMS units are out.
Three weeks ago we had a large structure fire in our town. First engine on scene had an engineer and a probationary firefighter who would generally not be on the nozzle yet. We had mutual aid departments from at least 5 other districts who had the fire completely out in 6 hours. As much as possible, we train together so everyone knows what to expect from firefighters and equipment.
I seen some inadequately staff fully paid ( not combination) departments that have to fight fires like this with 4 men for a very long time! Thank god for well staffed volunteer fire departments!
We have a MABAS based mutual aid system, people don't mind coming and don't mind being turned around if not needed, especially in the heat we've had this summer, it's nice to have an abundance of manpower and equipment
I’m from a small town with a volunteer FD. Most of the time we had a pretty good response. Partially because of the dedication of our volunteers…. But mostly because everyone in a small town wants to see what’s going on so they all drop what they are doing and show up.
I ran a department as the EMS Coordinator for 3 years. It was a struggling deoartment and nobody even had a basic firefighter cert. One month after taking over, everyone was a basic firefighter, two months later everyone had an Emergency Trauma Technician, six moths later everyone was Firedighter I and an EMT, I sought out grants for my training and I'd train at other departments. I got my FF2, Marine Offshore (my offshore certification bumped me up to FF2) and EMT in that 3 years. Trying to train volunteers isn't easy. They have work schedules and have kids at home. My RIT consisted of 3 men and 3 women, we only had 10 steady, reliable volunteers, but we all had our EMT, Firefighter 1. I also responded to mental crisis, domestic violence calls where I intervene becuase Alaska State Troopers have to fly in. 2018 we had an earthquake and I left the department (in good hands) because I was also a Red Cross Volunteer with disaster assistance. I finally finished 2001 and came back home. My community has a Trauma Room, staffed with CMA certified staff and behavioral health. All run by my peers. Our trauma room is necesary because we cant always get our patients to Anchorage immediately. I've had situations where we couldnt get a patient out for 8 hours due to weather.
We use Active 911, and it is great EXCEPT there's a significant delay from when the tones go to when the SMS comes in. Often around 2 minutes. That's probably out of their control, but it's an important consideration. We just use it as backup to the pagers because of this.
Here in Australia in the Rural Fire Service in NSW we have a similar app to active 911 and it is brilliant. It has made getting crews out so much easier and especially for getting strike teams from across the district.
@@interestedobserver587 It's like anything, pagers, sms paging. You just don't get notified. It is something you can't just stop, it happens and nothing can be done until technology progress to where cell reception coverage is 100% but I don't see that happening
@@Skippy2539 Emergency services pagers used to be their own network. Later it was contracted out but priority allocation. If the tool is an app based upon internet access then it would most likely be vulnerable to the cellular network being swamped in significant events. That was a lesson from Oklahoma Bombing through to Black Saturday in Victoria Australia.
As a volunteer firefighter for 8 years in the fire service we see this all the time and we try to setup our firefighting strategy to get the fire contained and exgushted but most of the golden rule is 2 in 2 out but sometimes we request our paid fire department for a ladder truck because our vol fire department has 3,000 gallons water tanker / engine
I would like to say a very big thankyou, I have learnt alot from you, I'm in the UK, early one morning watching tiktok was a large fire, there was lots of questions, bearing in mind I have no fire background but I could answer their questions. Like why hadn't they gone in to the building to put the fire out, turns out the roof had collapsed. Thank you
In my county volunteers work alongside the career firefighters. I wasn’t able to make it through fire 2 due to an old shoulder injury from the military. I’m working on getting on as a volunteer firefighter/ EMT and maybe later going through fire 2 again to get on full time.
I normally teach bldg construction to our rookies and I am constantly repeating to them how bad these new composite materials react to heat. For those who may not understand, lightweight building materials are usually incorporate glues which do not hold together under fire conditions. For firefighters they are a nightmare. For those who may become trapped in their homes during a fire they can be deadly and they have been. If you place this video at 2 am with occupants asleep upstairs there is a high probability of fatalities. Either fire crews cannot reach you due to high heat and collapse issues and/or the fire department personnel will deem the occupants as nonviable.
My department has 11 of us that are active riding members. We have 2 stations. The station I respond to has 3 members assigned to it, and only two of us are interior qualified. Yea, we need more help lol but no matter how many open houses and county wide recruiting events are held people these days just arent as interested as they used to be I guess
Could you do a video going over the pros and cons of the different brands of air packs (Scott, MSA, etc) I'm only a Jr. Firefighter but I've heard people argue about it and I'd like to hear your take on the subject
Growing up in Rombout fire rescue in Fishkill New York (1980s&1990s) I was listening to the scanner one night when my dad who was an engine driver and my mom the fire police officer responded to a call my dad made four calls for manpower to show up at the fire scene it got to the point where he almost put my mom on a hose line I don't know how many guys actually showed up after the fourth call I do know a couple of them were stuck in traffic because nobody would pull over for volunteer blue lights (no sirens) because personal vehicles are not considered emergency vehicles & police EMS and fire emergency vehicles all run Red only) but I do know it wasn't much and it was probably about 30 maybe 45 minutes before the 1st guy actually got there after the first call out
IDK, that 2nd alarm on arrival job is the kind where you see guys for the first time in 3 years struggling to get their gear on. Its the guys that roll out for the CO alarm at 3 a.m. of for that frequent flyer alarm activation the one time its activated cause the place is ripping. They're the ones that make it work. Not necessarily in this department but in general. And if you have different types of boxes. Some may be a simple 1 and 1 but some have 8-12 apparatus on scene by the second bell. Even rolling light, thats a crowd.
I’m a volunteer firefighter, and sometimes the response is terrible, we recently had a call of a wildfire nearby the highway, problem was, there was no driver, no one that could drive the truck towards the fire, what was good was they called a next department and sounded the pager again. But they say every single year is getting more difficult because people work in the city and some don’t even carry pagers with them, we use also a phone app and sirens (like those from WW2, not exactly the same ones but you get the picture), also a problem is finding interested people.
Volunteer firefighter here.... daytime availability is simply rough... our first due truck might have 3 guys on it. Thank goodness for mutual aid but those departments are equally struggling with daytime availability.
We use a system in Germany called FF-AGENT, it sounded like active 911 has nearly the same features. I’m interested now in the differences if the systems and mostly the differences caused by the different underlying concepts in America and Europe
Watching your videos have reignited my childhood dream of firefighting, and I ended up joining a volunteer department, and seeing this side of stuff is interesting. Also, traffic control is the worst lmao
Do volunteer firefighters come from a fire background? Like do they come from an academy/ previous department or are they just a “regular” person? And what are the benefits of being a volunteer? Wouldn’t that be hard since you do it every so and don’t get enough practice like regular firemen?
The "regular" firemen is the vounteer. For some numbers: Carrer(Full time paid firefighters) 350.000 US/ 35.000 Germany Volunteer 745.000 US/ 1.000.000 Germany (keep in mind Germany has 1/4 the population of the us) So after looking at these numbers I think you can agree that the standart firemen is indeed a volunteer. So what are the benefits of it? Doing something good is of course a thing, but also the social aspect can be a deal as usally you have a verry good climate inside a fire department. Can it be hard to get training hours full? absolutley but depeneds verry much on the department, but for germany you can even be set free from work by law for of course emergencys but also for sourtain advaced trainings(but I don´t think anything like this exists in the us) So to get to an end, yep it can get hard as volunteer but on the numbers alone I think you can see that there is at least something that its worth doing for.
Whenever there is a dispatch with notes like “fire showing, smoke showing, PD on scene with heavy smoke” then you get the guys that never show up for training, never do community service events, never run the 3am alarm system at the same place 3 times a week showing up on scene in their personal vehicles with their gear and grabbing the line off the truck before the guys on the truck have a chance to get off and having the nozzle. Then they get rewarded for how good of a job they did and the cycle continues putting a bad taste in all the other guy’s mouths that show up to everything and try to respond to the station and play by rules... then they realize years have gone by and they never got the chance to have the nozzle or do a search or cut a roof and they feel like they have wasted their time and they walk away from the volunteer fire service. It’s sad.
some of the volunteer fire fighters in my small town drive me nuts, they join to be cools and get flashing lights on there trucks. They drive faster than the ambulances and the police. i repeatedly see them driving by my house going 80mph+ in a 25mph zone. I've seen them doing 100 mph on a 55mph.
You would likely need to find the contact info for your local department and ask them if they are accepting volunteers. If they are not, ask if they know of a nearby department who is. Also can try contacting neighboring departments directly and asking them. I would be pretty surprised if you can't find an agency to hook up with in a few attempts. My department also accepts "non standard" volunteers who are not responders but want to help with things like grant writing, cleaning, maintenance etc. Basically if you want to help, and don't have any felony convictions we want you to hang around!
Google your nearest volunteer fire department and you'll probably find a contact phone number or email address. Contact them and they'll give you the instructions on how to signup for volunteer duty. Most VFD's will allow you to begin firefighter training if you are over 16.
From what I have learned about Franklin Township, they have the property values to establish a tax base to convert the fire service to a career agency. So what if you run medical call all day and into the night. The people are protected 24/7.
I'm a former volunteer firefighter and I will say I would rather have a career fire department than a volunteer fire department to put out a house fire. I left my department in 2013 due to lack of respect and being disrespected through my entire time I was on my volunteer fire department .It made me over dose on my personal medication when I was taking them and also taking Dayquil Nightquil and mixing that with beer and then hoping not to wake up the next day due the amount of disrespect I was getting. If I was on a career fire department I think I would've been treated a lot better with respect and being felt like a equal not a sideshow. I trust career fire departments to put out fires then volunteer fire departments. Due to lack of training and lack of dedication and lack of knowledge just my opinion this is based on my own experience.
Andrew I am sorry to hear that you were treated that way. No one should be treated that way especially on any type of fire department volunteer or not. The department you were on had leadership problems because any officer or brother firefighter should have put a stop to it they turned a blind eye to it.I also understand favoritism can be a problem it's ok for him but not for the other guy I have seen that in my own department but when it was forwarded to the elected officials the person was removed from the department. Yes many volunteer departments have training issues be it attendance or cost but you have to keep trying as a department because if you don't someone may get hurt or worse. I am a veteran firefighter of 40 years when I started we had 30± on the department but maybe 15 showed up now we have 19 with about 10 showing up what we have done is any structure fire automatically are neighboring volunteer department gets sent out as well and most of are county does the same it's what we have to do because becoming a full-time fire department is not possible in are area people could not afford the taxes it would take.
@@crazyjohn6130 yeah I totally agree that most towns or area's can't afford to pay for a carrier fire department. When I look back when I was on now I actually regret joining in the first place but I do have a very good friend who I met on my volunteer fire department he also left and he is a police officer and he has helped me through my dark times.
Try Firefighter Furnace: geni.us/firefighter-furnace (use code FIREFIGHTERNOW20 to get 20% off for life)
Thank you for all your great video's. YES volunteer is a big problem. My Humble opinion from years of working with a Explorer/ Cadet program with the local Volunteer Department is you get to weed out the ones that might be interested then drop out. The volunteers don't put a lot of time into the Fire Department TRAINING, then LOSS the volunteers. Are Cadets do REHAB so on any big Fire they go if Paramedic go. They work with the Paramedic on the Rest period for Firefighter. The Local school district is also very helpful on having a skills program, with school District. The Cadet program you can get the younger age highschool kids involved. It does save the volunteer Department, not having a big turn around of members.
In Slovenia, 90% of fire service is based ob volunteers. They are well trained for all sorts of situations, fires, road accidents, hazmats, bad weather… They are not paid, its more like a passion for them. Volunteer firefighting is our countrys pride. They recently tackled the biggest forest fire in countrys history. Some departments were on the field for days, even two weeks, more shifts straigt. Thankfuly help came from other countries with their airforces.
As a retired medivac helicopter pilot, I worked with a number of volunteer fire departments in some pretty rural areas. They have always been dedicated to their mission and always eager to learn. My hat is off to all the volunteer firefighters around the world.
@@timesup5105 I am also a retired Air Force Combat Search and Rescue pilot and can imagine what your father saw.
@@douglasbawden3134 LOL ! Seriously ?? 😊
Over 100 hours flight observer. FLIR, NODS, NAME IT!!! Coolest position ever! Pilot, ex Vietnam War Helo pilot... He let me take the stick one night... I don't know how they do it!!!! I was a train wreck!!!!
I couldn't maintain altitude, port/starboard... It was stupid!!! I told him to take it back, please Sir!
We flew under a 135' bridge!!! UNNDER!!! I loved it! PAX NAS didn't, my partner didn't. Oh well!
I spent 20 years as a volunteer. I live in central Vermont. Due to the fact that most depts in VT are volunteer, we have a massive mutual aid system. It was nothing to see 4 or 5 depts on a scene. When a MA dept goes to a fire, the depts behind them come in to cover the towns that came to the fire scene. Some depts would travel 20 miles or more for station coverage. A strong mutual aid system is essential for a small state like Vermont
We do the exact same thing in Indiana, but we may have 10-12 departments on scene if we're shuttling water, which for a large fire is almost always.
We have absolutely GREAT mutual aid departments and we train together often.
Best wishes from a German volunteer firefighter. I don't think we have a thankless job. Some people are smiling about us, when we do training at the station. But everybody who we could help, when a call was needed, was very thankfully.
We where recently hit by a tornado in Paderborn and I am sure our two full-time fire stations would have been totally lost for days responding to all the calls. Glad we had all the help available from neighboring volunteer fire stations.
I'm from Austria. Volunteer firefighters here are a social event, integrated into the rural community and that's why it works.
Same with Red Cross.
But when you go into an urban city these concepts don't work.
In Luxemburg it used to be, since firfighting became state business and not anymore municipality business, it changed. There was a big loss of volunteers (a good chunk went to professional as they were hiring many) but nevertheless many stopped because all of the annoyence the direction of the CGDIS created. I used to be allowed to leave on work time and keep getting paid (because the CGDIS would refund my salary) but because of the giant administrative bullshit, my boss does not allow me any more to leave on work time, this means when I leave I have to clock out and will not be paid a salary, and the lost time i will have to recatch as overtime/saturday. There is also big issues with the trainings, most of them are nowadays done during the week, and as you can guess it is pretty hard to get approval to get holidays for it when you are required at least to ask them 2! months in advance (used to be 1) and often the weekend ones get canceled (in this year alone 4 or 5 formations i was registered for had been canceled.
It has been a very loud and long topic already that in Luxemburg the direction of the CGDIS is aiming for a completly professionallized fire fighting but the question will be: who is going to pay all those firefighters their 4k+ salaries? If already the minimum needed to head out in the firetrucks are 4? In a municipality like mine where in average 2 interventions per month happen and there is a ~60% chance it getting canceled, this is a no brainer that it is a waste of money and human time.
@@GriderTornado totally stupid. Motivation of volunteers is higher and they are cheaper, even if their salary in their daily job gets refunded. Saved money can be spent on equipment.
In my personal opinion only the leader of a station should be paid by the government to have better influence on what people aware doing.
volunteer fire departments in germany are great they run the jounior firefighter "clubs" and with out the ffs a lot of emergencys could ended up pretty badly
As a retired police officer from a small town in Pa Ive never felt more proud of anyone than the volunteer fire fighters. To me, no one is derserving of more thanks than them. People used to thank me for my service and Id tell them thank you but the volunteer firefighters of our community deserve the real thanks and most importantly, donations. My only regret is not having done more for them than I had.
My family is from Bradford County, PA. My father was a Professional Firefighter here in Maryland. I'm a retired Game Warden. Started FF 1, but covid shut it down. Many calls before covid, lots of overhaul
Wow, Sir .. In my experience, you are a rarity.
Hey mike, im a 17 year old junior volunteer who started back in march with my towns department. Your videos have been super helpful to me and helped keep me interested and passionate about the job. The day of my interview I remember finding your interview guide video and went down a rabbit hole watching all your videos. Joining my department has been the best decision i ever made and your channel has helped me a lot so thank you and keep up the great videos
Also my department uses Active911 and i can vouch that its incredibly useful
So proud of you, I love being a volunteer firefighter. It also is the best decision I ever made.
You're The Donut Operator of The Fire Service. I've seen a few of your videos, and I love the way you break down videos of fires, and how you've also gone out of your way to give us advice on interview Do's and Dont's. You've also given your opinions on tactics Firefighters have used in videos, which helps a hopeful FF like myself get a understanding of how things could be done. I've already learned a variety of things from you and your videos, and I haven't known of your channel for that long. Thank you for the knowledge and advice you've given us, wether we want to be FFs or not.
Thank you for this. I was a volunteer for 17 years, rising to Captain more due to availability than ability (I was not allowed to run for Chief because I lived out of district) and daytime weekday fires were the worst for attendance, our town had automatic mutual aid for the 5 departments in town, and special arrangements with some of the surrounding districts. One time I arrived at the firehouse just a minute or so after the siren started to blow, I pulled the first response pumper out on the apron and geared up while waiting for other responders, after a few minutes, I called dispatch and rolled, by myself. I arrived at the scene, turned up the pump to 125, pulled off the first attack lines and got water on the fire before anyone else even showed up. A scary feeling.
Any VFD that votes for Chief is F'd up. You should be Chief 100% because of your qualifications, not popularity.
@@ffjsb And I would agree with you. Part of the reason I quit was a "difficulty" with the chief. The chief and I had been friends from the time he was a captain, and I was a new kink chaser, the chief's wife and my wife had been friends for 5 years before we married, we went on a couple of vacation trips as a foursome and had even spent the night at each other's houses when a dinner party got a little too drunk to drive home safely. They attended our wedding, and they came to our vow renewal at our tenth wedding anniversary, but there was trouble in their paradise. When she left him, she stayed at our house for two nights as she made her escape. I don't know how he found out, but life at the fire department became unbearable - one time we were just wetting down an abandoned building that we were making no attempt to save, and two of our firefighters were manning a hose line without proper safety gear (we still had some rubber coats even, so a while ago) and I, as captain, told them to shut down their line and get helmets, gloves, and boots on. They were from Company 1 and I was from Company 2 and one of them went to the chief and complained that I was rude, and I caught hell. The following month was our election of officers and I declined to run for re-election as captain or as lieutenant, and two months later, after another confrontation with the chief, I resigned from the department. A couple of years later the chief's now ex-wife told us that he had found out, and it became clear why the animosity, but it was too late to do anything about it.
Definitely sucks going "Driver only".
@@happycommentator6773 Should have heard me yelling for mutual aid on the radio on the way. Luckily the fire was confined to a small barn and a shed.
@@jimlongley9531 Beggars belief
Always great to see a good volunteer fire departments that actually train and know what they are doing
Thank you for reviewing my video. I'm just seeing this and wondered why viewer traffic increased a few months ago. I appreciate your comment about being impressed by the turnout considering it happened around 6:30 pm that evening, you know a majority of these volunteer ff were probably just sitting down to have dinner. There's quite a bit of negative comments on my video about why there's so many ff standing on the lawn "doing nothing". Most, if not all, of the departments in my county use IAmResponding, which is a similar app to Active911
I really like your stuff, glad you enabled SuperThanks to let us chip in. Thanks!
I'm from that area where this fire happened and I love what you said about volunteer attendance. Yes, most departments where I'm from are extremely lucky to get a rig out with a full crew. I know my department and other surrounding departments are the same way. However, with most volunteer departments, everyone will come out when they hear there's a fire
Yeah 😑you’re Right !
This was an amazing response from so many different volunteer departments. Water on fire right away, the number of First Responders unbelievable. Lots of hustle from responders, with a wide variety of fire equipment on scene too. Anyone would be proud to have the firefighters respond to their homes.
thanks, ffN. i really appreciate youtube channels that go the extra mile and put work into the video description. i know not everyone is interested or can access it (my pc died yesterday and i had to watch via tablet) but as soon as you mentioned building construction types, i wanted to know more about it. thanks for the link! 👍
Love your videos! As a volunteer firefighter for the past 3 years. Hearing breakdowns of real scenario calls from a veteran career firefighter have been awesome to learn from. As a general request, breakdowns from other types of calls, ie. medical or auto ex would be great to see as well.
Thanks again
Every volunteer team I've ever seen has been top notch. Usually they had higher turnouts than needed for any sort of fire call. Thee's so much unspoken bravery of the men and women who compromise our volunteer departments, and many of them have been more dedicated than the paid staff in larger cities I've lived in over the years.
You haven't seen many VFD's then, turnout is a HUGE problem across the country. A turnout this big is generally unusual.
another reason why so many FF's (at end of video), simply because mutual aid will draw a lot of FF's... the issue (in my opinion) of volunteer fire service is "initial response" (first in) units,... as you pointed out, staffing 24/7 is impossible (a few exceptions in the east coast), so, first units will be with at best 3 man crew... add to this the distance between fire stations and mutual aid response, quick placement of fire hoses is very difficult (and rarely quick as stated).. i admire the dedication of volunteers (thumbs up)
One of the most impressive volunteer responses I have ever seen. Great video!
Oh Yeah🤕
I stretched my first line back in the 80's with a full time metro FD until I retired at 30 years.
About halfway through my career our city lifted the residence requirements so my wife and I moved out of the metro and into a mountain community served with a VFD that I also joined and am still at today. We have about two dozen members that show up regularly for training, and about a dozen that can be counted on to respond somewhat regularly. So there are often calls where only a few manage to show up and we are left to work with just a small crew. This past weekend we had 4 MVA's and only 4-5 people responded to each, so it can be tough quite often.
A big issue for us is the drive time due to long travel distance in and around the mountains. It can take 20-30 minutes to get to a call in our primary area, calls out on the highway can take more than an hour to reach because how vast the area is. Earlier this year we had a family of four killed when a drunk driver in a company truck crossed the CL and plowed into them head on. It took me 45 minutes in our Squad (our fastest vehicle) to reach the site, a deputy happened to be about 15 minutes away and found everything burning out of control, all we could do was cut out their remains.
What state are you from? 😅 asking for a friend, so we don’t move there 😵💫
@@thepressurepack3777
Looks like your triggered 😂🤣😆
My department only has 10 volunteers total with 3 active EMTs. We are doing GOOD to get 4 people to turn up for just about any call including MVCs (in my county in Oregon we are not allowed to call them MVAs anymore as it COULD be taken as an expert calling the crash an accident and no one at fault). Anyway totally agree that with the videos stated 3 top problems and hope all the other VFDs can hang in there like us and make it work. Stay safe and do good things everyone!
SAD.. Of course you know, from your experience that A] you did not cause the emergency, and B] you can only work with what resources you have.
I just want to let u know thank u very much I just pass my firefighter exam yesterday because of ur video . Keep up the good work
Congrats
Congratulations!
Awesome that the driver of the first arriving engine left room for the truck. I've seen too many videos and experienced it too many times firsthand that the truck gets blocked out, or the truck gets into a good position only to have someone nose up behind them and block access to their ground ladders.
I am a firefighter in Hamilton township New Jersey. Our department has worked along side with Franklin township. They are great. A lot of us in this township are volunteer we always show up to calls no matter what.
Howdy from Allentown
My brother in law ran with Hamilton years ago. I thought you were all paid now.
@@brucecuratola6389 yes now they are.
@@flyingled3176 hello Allentown!
Aussie Volunteer here, good job done on that one, it was going that's for sure. My brigade is full volunteer urban and wildfire so have to deal with both and I agree, retention is a major issue and so is recruiting the right people.
I can attest to active 911, it is truly an amazing tool. We are paid on call and all have pagers but when your pager isn't on you, it died, or you accidentally left it off after work then you get all the information sent to you on your phone. It does have a slight delay but still helps tremendously in the fire service! It usually gives you more information than the original dispatch too. As well as timestamps for things such as time of call, dispatch time, en route time, on scene time, and clear time which make paperwork a breeze afterwards. 10/10, I'm glad they sponsored your channel!!
I could not agree more about the issues with volunteer departments. My 65 year old father joined his VFD 4 years ago, 90% of the time he is the only one who shows up when they are toned out (over 30 on the roster)I am moving up there next month so I can work with him.
Good luck
I'm at an urban vol station servicing an area of 25k and about 45k in the summer. We have about 60 members and are part of a state-wide agency with about 1,200 stations and 50k active volunteers. Even with 60+ people at our station we have been struggling because throughout covid a number of our senior members left for work and such in other areas. Probably lost close to 100 years of experience.
We train very well and regularly but attendance to calls has dropped. We use to get 2 of our 4 vehicles the door in a few minutes (10 people). Now we are lucky if we get a full truck. It's getting better, but slowly.
In my volunteer days (late 80s) I worked night shift in a regional 911 center and ran calls during the day. I was a paramedic the fire district was only BLS at the time. We had lights/sirens in our personal vehicles (POVs). Our department SOP was to tone out backup stations during the day due to lack of manpower. We had 8 stations and in addition to all apparatus at my station I was qualified on the aerial (Pierce 75’ tandem-axle quint that was basically a crane with a good ladder, pump, hose, etc) in another station. Our daytime staffing (made up primarily of night shift workers) was a skeleton crew for our rather large district. (When I first started, my captain told me that for medical calls to never to go to the station for our rescue unless driving by, but to respond directly to the scene. We didn’t run all medical stuff, maybe half.) Anyway, I can’t tell you how many times I ran calls taking our engine solo to fire alarms and small-ish fires, other stations doing the same. But when we got a real structure fire suddenly we had plenty of personnel who all responded in their POVs. That always angered me. You need apparatus to fight fires and we didn’t have enough “regular responders” to get proper equipment to fire scenes.
I won’t air much dirty laundry, but I had to quit after the department made Inside Edition for its Christmas parties and even worse I followed a chief (who was in a department vehicle) that was under the influence to a fire!
Several friends I served with became paid firefighters and I actually went into law enforcement. I’m disabled now and miss those days horribly even with the shenanigans that went on!
Less than a year to go and I receive my Fire Services Exemplary Service Medal from the Canadian Government for 20 years of volunteer firefighter service. Joined when I was 18. IMO our fire dept has the best group of guys you could ask for. Many more with 20, 30, even 40 + years of service on our dept.
I spent 50 years as a volunteer fireman and thoroughly enjoyed the experience ,
I still hang around the station and meet weekly with some former members.
Our station has some of the best trained guys in the county who are very dedicated to serving, several of them work for paid fire department s .
In our department, we love active alert (911), it just that our county dispatch takes forever to send them out sometimes, and the pager goes off first. Active Alert is very useful, just not completely ready to be fully integrated as a stand alone service until the dispatchers make there end ready.
Austin 🤕
Being and staying volunteer is a major good feeling. My city is pushing 120,000 and estimated to double by 2025.
Running soon to be 8 to 9 (depending on how the city growth dictates) stations. Still fully volunteer. Granted we have shifts that we can pick and choose to pick up that leaves at least one station station staffed at all times.
But that feeling is great being able to maintain the ISO1 rating while being full volly in a city that many assume is fully paid.
There's many a great men in this department that are well over twenty years of their life and free time sacrificed for this city. Couldn't ask for better men to look up to
There's ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for a city of 120,000 having a volunteer FD. NONE. You should be PAID for doing the job.
@@ffjsb It's been volunteer since its founding almost 100 years ago. We all know going in there's no real money. We don't do it for the money, we do it for the sense of duty, brotherhood and simply it's fun.
We do get stipends and yearly pay outs, so we definitely get a little something.
By being volunteer, the city can use those funds and we all get free training through fire academies, whatever outside training we desire through any college or school. Any certifications we desire. Top of the line equipment and apparatuses. We are very blessed and take pride as I said being able to maintain an ISO 1 while staying volunteer and helping save our beautiful city money.
Congratulations on maintaining the ISO1 rating!
@@Ameri-Texan Tradition has nothing to do with it. You should be PAID to do that job. It's not like it's some rural district in N. Dakota or something. You can get that training with a paid FD too. Time for the community to step up and do what's right.
@@ffjsb
I'll agree to disagree.
It very much has to do with tradition within our department and its history. There's a massive push against the city from our members NOT to go paid. We wear that Volunteer on our logo with pride. Not to be conceited, but we maintain such good numbers and responses for that ISO 1 that an overwhelming amount of our citizens don't even realize we're fully volunteer.
We love the fact that we're saving our city millions of dollars, saving our citizens who knows in taxes.
We are happy to not receive a "full time" paycheck.
In fact, with many members working in the local plants and refineries around here in Houston and many working for NASA, a vast majority would be taking a vast pay cut if we went full time.
our volunteer department had this same issue with attendance a bit ago, we had a call for a car fire and between our city department (the one i'm on) and our rural department we had 9 people show up for the call at 10am on a Monday and we attempted to call for another department but they didn't have anyone who could respond and thankfully we got it put out with just the 9 of us
Man this whole video relates directly to my combination department. Volunteers are crucial to impact on a scene and it seems like most of our weekly trainings consist of complaints of not enough attendance. This is incredible that they have such reliable resources
Thank you for being a positive and professional representative of the fire service. We need more content creators like you!
Attendance can be difficult. A volunteer department near where I lived had that problem. Its a city of around 5000. But a major fire they had at a commercial building only had 2 firefighters and the chief initially. Mutual aid helped but they had a minimal response and the chief did voice his frustration in that.
Wow, we have a town of 375 and I can count on at least 8 guys showing up to a call, from a call list of 14.
@@Jimmythefish577 i think after that fire the chief cleaned house or did something. My town is only 3000 and has about 20 to 25 volunteers at any time. Usually they get about 80% response. They do have an attendance policy for training and calls. If you miss so many you will be dismissed. I know you also have to inform the chief if you'll be out of town as well.
@@Jimmythefish577 🙄
@@nebraskaninkansas347 Neb 😬
Retired, moved to a small town, joined the local volunteer fire department. Just like I did a career ago. Much more fun switching between structure calls and wildfire calls.
It’s refreshing to see a video and comments that recognize and appreciate a job well done. Typically no matter how you approach a scene there is a trend of criticizing everything. This can be a good thing if it is constructive but unfortunately most of the time it is not. On the flip side it is also nice to see good timely, effective firefighting by personnel who train hard. Well done.
I started with A-911 on my department, and the constant growth and updates have been astounding. I would not go with any other app for first response and notification...
We’ve been using Active-911 for two years now, great resource. We can see who’s responding, where they are and we can even allocate them to particular tasks on the fire ground.
my volunteer station we have people come in and then go career ones they get their certs. 1/2 said they only joined to get the certs to make it faster to get hired. others left said we do not get a house fire every day and run more medical calls than anything else. Im a volunteer for over 10 years and my county is doing everything they can to push us out and we see it.
It's impressive what equipment volunteer departments have back east. Don't see that anywhere around where I live. On another note, your first in engine could have positioned (if your department didn't have a stick to put up in the air) in front of the house and use the deck gun to get a knock on the main body of fire, wouldn't have been near as effective but it would help. Great videos as always!
Im a volunteer firefighter in the Netherlands, my departement uses a app called brandweer rooster in combination with a pager. It gives us the alarm in our phone and in the pager
Hello, does volunteer firefighters get paid as if you were a regular firefighter ?
@@britneygrant9773 there are “on-call” departments that will pay you for a certain amount of hours per the calls you attend. There are also volunteer departments that are strictly volunteer or give you minimal tax breaks. All depends on the department, if you are interested contact your local fire department and ask what type of department they are whether it’s full time, on-call/per diem, or volunteer.
Dirk 🤨
Britney Grant such Brigades are called Retained Brigades here
To be fair, a daytime structure fire is always going to have a better turnout than a 3am automatic fire alarm or CO alarm. Any structure fire in a volly town is probably going to bring people out of the woodwork that haven't shown up to anything in months.
Our best turnouts were the middle of the night fires when most of our volunteers were home. Daytime responses were thin because most of us worked outside of our city. But a midnight structure fire often turned out 25-28 firefighters. A few years after I moved away the department became paid and they needed to dispatch 2 or 3 departments to get minimum personnel on the scene. Where I live now, there is only one paid department within 40 miles and they run an 8 man crew in two stations including two EMS units, two engines and a ladder. That leaves a two person fire crew at each station if the EMS units are out.
Firefighters are who I look up to, they’re real heroes! Nothing but respect for them.
Three weeks ago we had a large structure fire in our town. First engine on scene had an engineer and a probationary firefighter who would generally not be on the nozzle yet. We had mutual aid departments from at least 5 other districts who had the fire completely out in 6 hours.
As much as possible, we train together so everyone knows what to expect from firefighters and equipment.
I seen some inadequately staff fully paid ( not combination) departments that have to fight fires like this with 4 men for a very long time! Thank god for well staffed volunteer fire departments!
Thanks from a german volunteer firefighter 🇩🇪👨🚒👩🚒🚒
😬👋
We have a MABAS based mutual aid system, people don't mind coming and don't mind being turned around if not needed, especially in the heat we've had this summer, it's nice to have an abundance of manpower and equipment
I’m from a small town with a volunteer FD. Most of the time we had a pretty good response. Partially because of the dedication of our volunteers…. But mostly because everyone in a small town wants to see what’s going on so they all drop what they are doing and show up.
I ran a department as the EMS Coordinator for 3 years. It was a struggling deoartment and nobody even had a basic firefighter cert. One month after taking over, everyone was a basic firefighter, two months later everyone had an Emergency Trauma Technician, six moths later everyone was Firedighter I and an EMT, I sought out grants for my training and I'd train at other departments.
I got my FF2, Marine Offshore (my offshore certification bumped me up to FF2) and EMT in that 3 years.
Trying to train volunteers isn't easy. They have work schedules and have kids at home. My RIT consisted of 3 men and 3 women, we only had 10 steady, reliable volunteers, but we all had our EMT, Firefighter 1. I also responded to mental crisis, domestic violence calls where I intervene becuase Alaska State Troopers have to fly in.
2018 we had an earthquake and I left the department (in good hands) because I was also a Red Cross Volunteer with disaster assistance.
I finally finished 2001 and came back home.
My community has a Trauma Room, staffed with CMA certified staff and behavioral health. All run by my peers.
Our trauma room is necesary because we cant always get our patients to Anchorage immediately. I've had situations where we couldnt get a patient out for 8 hours due to weather.
We use Active 911, and it is great EXCEPT there's a significant delay from when the tones go to when the SMS comes in. Often around 2 minutes. That's probably out of their control, but it's an important consideration. We just use it as backup to the pagers because of this.
Something is wrong in your setup/system. We use Active 911, and there's no more than 5 seconds of delay for us.
@@sleepyjay2664 yea. If we are getting toned out with multiple stations and our tones aren't first, my phone will go off before my pager.
Here in Australia in the Rural Fire Service in NSW we have a similar app to active 911 and it is brilliant. It has made getting crews out so much easier and especially for getting strike teams from across the district.
And how cat proof is it when you lose the cellular mobile service?
@@interestedobserver587 It's like anything, pagers, sms paging. You just don't get notified. It is something you can't just stop, it happens and nothing can be done until technology progress to where cell reception coverage is 100% but I don't see that happening
@@Skippy2539 Emergency services pagers used to be their own network. Later it was contracted out but priority allocation. If the tool is an app based upon internet access then it would most likely be vulnerable to the cellular network being swamped in significant events. That was a lesson from Oklahoma Bombing through to Black Saturday in Victoria Australia.
Great looking equipment for volunteer crews 👍
As a volunteer firefighter for 8 years in the fire service we see this all the time and we try to setup our firefighting strategy to get the fire contained and exgushted but most of the golden rule is 2 in 2 out but sometimes we request our paid fire department for a ladder truck because our vol fire department has 3,000 gallons water tanker / engine
I would like to say a very big thankyou, I have learnt alot from you, I'm in the UK, early one morning watching tiktok was a large fire, there was lots of questions, bearing in mind I have no fire background but I could answer their questions. Like why hadn't they gone in to the building to put the fire out, turns out the roof had collapsed. Thank you
In my county volunteers work alongside the career firefighters. I wasn’t able to make it through fire 2 due to an old shoulder injury from the military. I’m working on getting on as a volunteer firefighter/ EMT and maybe later going through fire 2 again to get on full time.
I was so excited to finally pass EVOC so i could at least take the bus to the scene. Re-tones late at night are my nightmare fuel.
I normally teach bldg construction to our rookies and I am constantly repeating to them how bad these new composite materials react to heat.
For those who may not understand, lightweight building materials are usually incorporate glues which do not hold together under fire conditions. For firefighters they are a nightmare. For those who may become trapped in their homes during a fire they can be deadly and they have been. If you place this video at 2 am with occupants asleep upstairs there is a high probability of fatalities. Either fire crews cannot reach you due to high heat and collapse issues and/or the fire department personnel will deem the occupants as nonviable.
You sure ? 😬
Kevin Adams how such materials are allowed is beggars belief
My department has 11 of us that are active riding members. We have 2 stations. The station I respond to has 3 members assigned to it, and only two of us are interior qualified. Yea, we need more help lol but no matter how many open houses and county wide recruiting events are held people these days just arent as interested as they used to be I guess
Could you do a video going over the pros and cons of the different brands of air packs (Scott, MSA, etc) I'm only a Jr. Firefighter but I've heard people argue about it and I'd like to hear your take on the subject
That is a good looking ladder truck!!
Growing up in Rombout fire rescue in Fishkill New York (1980s&1990s) I was listening to the scanner one night when my dad who was an engine driver and my mom the fire police officer responded to a call my dad made four calls for manpower to show up at the fire scene it got to the point where he almost put my mom on a hose line I don't know how many guys actually showed up after the fourth call I do know a couple of them were stuck in traffic because nobody would pull over for volunteer blue lights (no sirens) because personal vehicles are not considered emergency vehicles & police EMS and fire emergency vehicles all run Red only) but I do know it wasn't much and it was probably about 30 maybe 45 minutes before the 1st guy actually got there after the first call out
That’s some bad ass equipment for a volunteer department. Nothing like that where I am
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Finally, firefighters that are actually running around like they are doing something!
IDK, that 2nd alarm on arrival job is the kind where you see guys for the first time in 3 years struggling to get their gear on. Its the guys that roll out for the CO alarm at 3 a.m. of for that frequent flyer alarm activation the one time its activated cause the place is ripping. They're the ones that make it work. Not necessarily in this department but in general. And if you have different types of boxes. Some may be a simple 1 and 1 but some have 8-12 apparatus on scene by the second bell. Even rolling light, thats a crowd.
I’m a volunteer firefighter, and sometimes the response is terrible, we recently had a call of a wildfire nearby the highway, problem was, there was no driver, no one that could drive the truck towards the fire, what was good was they called a next department and sounded the pager again. But they say every single year is getting more difficult because people work in the city and some don’t even carry pagers with them, we use also a phone app and sirens (like those from WW2, not exactly the same ones but you get the picture), also a problem is finding interested people.
@@LauRoot892 Germany :)!
@@stefankeller7176 🤨
@@LauRoot892 what?
@@LauRoot892 what? I dont get it 🤣 didnt you asked where i was from?
Volunteer firefighter here.... daytime availability is simply rough... our first due truck might have 3 guys on it. Thank goodness for mutual aid but those departments are equally struggling with daytime availability.
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I havent been active in several years due to family and health issues but now i got it under control so last week i reapplied again
We have that up in Vermont act of 911. The only bad part is there's so many areas that you don't get service on your phone so we still carry pages
was there someone sitting in that car or was it reflection? 2:20
We use a system in Germany called FF-AGENT, it sounded like active 911 has nearly the same features. I’m interested now in the differences if the systems and mostly the differences caused by the different underlying concepts in America and Europe
Also thank you for this, your channel is the best on youtube! Heck in the web thank you!!!
I love the RC clips.. lol.. great vid bud.
This channel is so awesome. Thank you
Watching your videos have reignited my childhood dream of firefighting, and I ended up joining a volunteer department, and seeing this side of stuff is interesting. Also, traffic control is the worst lmao
We get guys out of the woodwork for structure fires. No busy shows at 3am for a CO alarm.
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Do volunteer firefighters come from a fire background? Like do they come from an academy/ previous department or are they just a “regular” person? And what are the benefits of being a volunteer? Wouldn’t that be hard since you do it every so and don’t get enough practice like regular firemen?
The "regular" firemen is the vounteer. For some numbers:
Carrer(Full time paid firefighters) 350.000 US/ 35.000 Germany
Volunteer 745.000 US/ 1.000.000 Germany
(keep in mind Germany has 1/4 the population of the us)
So after looking at these numbers I think you can agree that the standart firemen is indeed a volunteer.
So what are the benefits of it? Doing something good is of course a thing, but also the social aspect can be a deal as usally you have a verry good climate inside a fire department.
Can it be hard to get training hours full? absolutley but depeneds verry much on the department, but for germany you can even be set free from work by law for of course emergencys but also for sourtain advaced trainings(but I don´t think anything like this exists in the us) So to get to an end, yep it can get hard as volunteer but on the numbers alone I think you can see that there is at least something that its worth doing for.
Have more firefighters on scene at a single house fire than we have in our entire damn country. That’s awesome.
I live in a manufactured home with a basement. Would that count as two stories or just a single story because there's no technical upstairs?
Awesome video! I absolutely agree with you and your videos are very informative and interesting. Keep up the good work!
I still don't understand why fire suppression isn't standard in new home construction. It only adds between $5-8k, depending on the home size.
This is how our volunteer fire department works in our whole county
We use active 911, they need an update being trying to send us 30-45 min away from fire when it comes to things on per say a highway-interstate
To see GingerBilly’s clip here just topped off an already great video!
That house is toast. All they can do now is save it from complete destruction. Maybe the owners will be able to save a few items.
I know it's only rock and roll, but I like it!!!! 🤘🏽
My volunteer department uses I am responding as well as pagers. I am responding is a pretty neat app
Awesome Job
Whenever there is a dispatch with notes like “fire showing, smoke showing, PD on scene with heavy smoke” then you get the guys that never show up for training, never do community service events, never run the 3am alarm system at the same place 3 times a week showing up on scene in their personal vehicles with their gear and grabbing the line off the truck before the guys on the truck have a chance to get off and having the nozzle. Then they get rewarded for how good of a job they did and the cycle continues putting a bad taste in all the other guy’s mouths that show up to everything and try to respond to the station and play by rules... then they realize years have gone by and they never got the chance to have the nozzle or do a search or cut a roof and they feel like they have wasted their time and they walk away from the volunteer fire service. It’s sad.
some of the volunteer fire fighters in my small town drive me nuts, they join to be cools and get flashing lights on there trucks. They drive faster than the ambulances and the police. i repeatedly see them driving by my house going 80mph+ in a 25mph zone. I've seen them doing 100 mph on a 55mph.
It helps to have a town/municipality that understands that their budget will be orders of magnitude higher if the FD will be paid versus volunteer.
In my last town the words "working fire" brought guys out of the woodwork that you hadn't seen in years.
I want to do volunteer how would I start? Where to reach out?
You would likely need to find the contact info for your local department and ask them if they are accepting volunteers. If they are not, ask if they know of a nearby department who is. Also can try contacting neighboring departments directly and asking them. I would be pretty surprised if you can't find an agency to hook up with in a few attempts. My department also accepts "non standard" volunteers who are not responders but want to help with things like grant writing, cleaning, maintenance etc. Basically if you want to help, and don't have any felony convictions we want you to hang around!
How do you become a volunteer firefighter
Google your nearest volunteer fire department and you'll probably find a contact phone number or email address. Contact them and they'll give you the instructions on how to signup for volunteer duty. Most VFD's will allow you to begin firefighter training if you are over 16.
From what I have learned about Franklin Township, they have the property values to establish a tax base to convert the fire service to a career agency. So what if you run medical call all day and into the night. The people are protected 24/7.
Interesting
I'm a volunteer firefighter and its hard work I have been to calls were we have 1st 2nd and even 10th alarms and it's bad
All those guys in the pretty coats could have locked arms and stomped that fire out! Sheesh
Oops 😬 ! Maybe 🤔
not going to lie light weight contructed house scare the shit out of me was a volunteer fire fighter for 24 years
As someone who is Irish such construction wouldn’t be tolerated.
THANK YOU FROM BANGLADESH
I'm a former volunteer firefighter and I will say I would rather have a career fire department than a volunteer fire department to put out a house fire. I left my department in 2013 due to lack of respect and being disrespected through my entire time I was on my volunteer fire department .It made me over dose on my personal medication when I was taking them and also taking Dayquil Nightquil and mixing that with beer and then hoping not to wake up the next day due the amount of disrespect I was getting. If I was on a career fire department I think I would've been treated a lot better with respect and being felt like a equal not a sideshow. I trust career fire departments to put out fires then volunteer fire departments. Due to lack of training and lack of dedication and lack of knowledge just my opinion this is based on my own experience.
@@LauRoot892 hi
@@LauRoot892 I live in New Jersey I moved to New Jersey in 2003 from Texas where I was born and raised
@@LauRoot892 I'm 33
Andrew I am sorry to hear that you were treated that way. No one should be treated that way especially on any type of fire department volunteer or not. The department you were on had leadership problems because any officer or brother firefighter should have put a stop to it they turned a blind eye to it.I also understand favoritism can be a problem it's ok for him but not for the other guy I have seen that in my own department but when it was forwarded to the elected officials the person was removed from the department. Yes many volunteer departments have training issues be it attendance or cost but you have to keep trying as a department because if you don't someone may get hurt or worse. I am a veteran firefighter of 40 years when I started we had 30± on the department but maybe 15 showed up now we have 19 with about 10 showing up what we have done is any structure fire automatically are neighboring volunteer department gets sent out as well and most of are county does the same it's what we have to do because becoming a full-time fire department is not possible in are area people could not afford the taxes it would take.
@@crazyjohn6130 yeah I totally agree that most towns or area's can't afford to pay for a carrier fire department. When I look back when I was on now I actually regret joining in the first place but I do have a very good friend who I met on my volunteer fire department he also left and he is a police officer and he has helped me through my dark times.