r/Firefighting • u/wolfgang9996 • Mar 27 '25
Volunteer / Combination / Paid on Call I resigned from a volly department
After much deliberation I decided to resign from a volunteer department in my town. Though I don't regret it, I write with a heavy heart. I tried to juggle my full time job, renovating my entire kitchen to the studs while my wife was pregnant (we had a fixer upper that had a mouse infested kitchen that needed a full gut), and do volly.
I made the few calls and the meetings I could, I was only on the department over a year or so. I took fire 1 while I was in between jobs because I got fired right before my son was born. Between all this stress I cracked during the training when we navigated the rooms blindfolded with full kit on. I just couldn't do it to myself anymore, you can't measure adrenaline or cortisol but mine must've been off the charts, and I just told the trainer I tapped out. All the while nursing a neck injury I've had since I was 18 from being rear ended and getting whiplash. Must've been week 4 or 5 of fire 1.
I guess I am just writing this to just state my piece, because I just told my captain I couldn't complete the class and that it was pretty much the end of the road for me as this was going to be my last push while I was unemployed. Right around that time I got a very good job offer about 45 minutes away, eating up even more time in a commute (not to mention a good pay increase and overall better job than the one I got fired from). Maybe this is the universe nudging me where I need to go. I have recurring dreams about the department, the last one a fireman died and the other guys on the department told me to not even bother going to the funeral because I don't care.
It's been heavy for me and objectively I am a bit of a late starter (31 now) and already have existing neck/back injuries. It just sucks to feel like the dream is dead...my dad was career so I feel like I have some of the "mental" game just from my upbringing...but my body just won't carry the load. It's the story of my life. Personality wise I have always fit in with ex military, mechanics, bikers you name it but when the rubber hit the road with this experiment I just cracked...just telling you all not to garner sympathy but just a guy who's telling his truth.
the end
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u/Beneficial_Jaguar_15 Mar 27 '25
It’s not for everyone. You tried, that’s what counts. Atleast you resigned and didn’t take up a spot from someone else.
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u/Ok_Buddy_9087 Edit to create your own flair Mar 27 '25
Lol. He wasn’t taking up a spot. Days of somebody having to die for a new member to be accepted are well over.
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u/Beneficial_Jaguar_15 Mar 28 '25
My paid per call station hasn’t taken a new member in 2 years. We have 32 spots full.
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u/yungingr Mar 27 '25
Just like everything else in the fire service related to department operations.... that depends.
I know of volunteer departments in my area that still have waiting lists. In fact, the guy sitting 20 feet behind my desk right now at our regular job had to wait almost a year for a spot to open up - on a department in a town of 600.
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u/Ok_Buddy_9087 Edit to create your own flair Mar 27 '25
I must admit, capacity limits for volunteer departments in 2025 is not something I thought they still had the luxury of doing.
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u/yungingr Mar 27 '25
Could probably be it's own thread, but I can understand several reasons for it - an already budget-strapped department can't afford to have 30 members needing gear every 10 years, if 15 of them aren't pulling their weight - so the capacity limit helps force them to 'trim the fat' of any T-shirt firemen.
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u/Ok_Buddy_9087 Edit to create your own flair Mar 27 '25 edited Mar 27 '25
I guess I likened it to the volunteer company I got my start with. The senior members can literally all tell you the name of the man whose death opened up a spot on the company for them to join. Which is the most absurd way to do it, without question. The continued respiration and perfusion of person in their 80s or 90s preventing a person in their 20s from being a functional firefighter is an absolutely wild, and I would go so far as to say negligent, way to run a fire company. (ETA: that company doesn’t operate that way anymore; they’ll take whoever. There is a bylaw about having to live in town, but that’s ignored too.)
I get the need to reserve gear for active members, but the way I look at it is the more members you have, the more active members you’re going to get, regardless of how many inactive members you have, if that makes sense. Restricting your membership to say 30 and getting 15 active members seems short-sighted when you could open it up to 60 and maybe get 30 to 45 active members.
At the end of the day, in an age where recruitment and retention are in a freefall, preventing a willing body from joining because of an arbitrary number somebody made up probably decades ago seems like a dumb idea.
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u/yungingr Mar 27 '25 edited Mar 27 '25
Oh, I'll absolutely agree with you on the geezers. (they're called "back row r*****s" (yeah, not PC..not my doing) in my department, because at our business meetings, they sit in the back row, bitch about everything, and don't have a clue what's going on). But we remove them from active status, they become "life members" and just come to the business meetings and events - and don't take a spot away from an able-bodied individual.
Our cap comes from our city council - assuming it's somewhat tied to the workman's comp insurance they have to pay on us, but I don't know. We're getting close to it, but in the 15 years I've been on we've never been 'full'.
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u/Firefluffer Fire-Medic who actually likes the bus Mar 27 '25
In my area it’s so damn cultural and depends on the chief. I’ve watched one department go from 45 volunteers to under a dozen in under a decade. The chief blames national trends in volunteering, but a neighboring department has gained 30% in membership during the same time.
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u/nicklor Mar 27 '25
Where is that lol I'm in Jersey and every voli department that doesn't lead to a paid job is pretty weak
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u/yungingr Mar 27 '25
Northwest Iowa. The closest fully career department to me is 45 miles to the east. Department 30 miles north has two paid positions - the chief and one FF that does the day to day maintenance.
My county is just a little shy of 600 square miles, and there's 9 departments (all fully volunteer) covering it - three of which are right on or very near the county line, to where half of their district is in the neighboring county. Just isn't the population or tax base anywhere what it would take to support a paid department.
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u/nicklor Mar 27 '25
Yeah that's a pretty crazy response area size. Hopefully the volunteer situation lasts. People talk about how 30 years ago we were waitlisted also in my volunteer department. Now we are going on fumes with 2 full time paid FFs.
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u/yungingr Mar 27 '25
Our district is about 90 sq miles of that - from our station to the furthest point is a solid 15 minute drive. Incidentally, I've got a friend that lives in that area, and I've told him, "if you think you need us, you should have called 5 min ago"
Luckily, most of the departments around are still running rosters in the 20-25 range. We have automatic mutual aid set up for any structure fire, and usually by the time it's over have at least one more department on scene.
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u/TheSavageBeast83 Mar 27 '25
It really shouldn't be for anyone. We live in too much of a rat race for someone to be giving up free time to volunteer as a firefighter
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u/BulkyInternet9402 Mar 27 '25
…. You’re just a volunteer man, relax. It’s not that big of a deal. If you think your age is a minor reason then maybe the job isn’t for you and it’s for the best so someone else can fill the boot. Side note, your health and physical condition is 90% your doing and something you can change. If you look for a door you will find an exit (there’s always excuses)
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u/SeniorFlyingMango NYS Vol. FF/AEMT Mar 27 '25
There’s always room for people. Have you thought about doing fire police or being an EMT? You can go and be a social member/associate or any other name that it gets called where you help with any function the fire department has.
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u/yungingr Mar 27 '25
If we're being completely honest, once I got my EMT, it took up more time and was a more rigid commitment than being a firefighter. Granted, FF was 100% volunteer, and EMT was PRN at a paid service, but still. I'd been on the fire department over 10 years at the point I took the EMT class, and once I was on the bus, I quickly realized that despite having worn a pager for a decade, the weekends that I was carrying my EMS pager instead, I didn't sleep for SHIT - and I soon realized that it was because on the fire side, if I slept through the page or took a couple minutes longer getting out the door, there was 15 other guys responding, and my not being there right away wasn't going to make or break the call. But on the EMS side, it was me and my medic. If I'm running slow, so is the ambulance.
Lot more stress, in my book.
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u/ThatsMyYam Mar 27 '25
many won’t, most can’t. good on you for figuring it out. gotta find where you aren’t going to be to find out where you are. don’t let it become an internalized reflection of your character. good luck with the new job offer!
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u/EatinBeav WA Career FF/EMT Mar 27 '25
You can measure cortisol
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Mar 27 '25
I detect high cortisol when I'm hyperventilating and stop and deep breathe and watch it come down like clock work. Nervous system is totally controllable through breath work.
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u/000111000000111000 After 40 years still learning Mar 27 '25
Ok..... Your a volunteer... You do you. I did me, and left in 2020... Then I got the bug and did it again from 2022-2024 as a fire police officer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Nothing to it. Just like the local ladies flower club, your done with it.
NOW MOVE ON SOLDIER!!!!! Don't ask for a sob party, you know you did good and be proud of what you have accomplished. No matter what your level, you have exceeded by taking that step... You volunteered. Hell I did it for about 40 years and I still love it. Even though I'm not part of it, my ears and heart are still in it. I love the sound of a Q winding up first thing in the morning, and the smell of smoke in the air.... Its a rush that will never leave me.
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u/Kingly46 Mar 27 '25
How is fire police. It was suggested to me. I'm looking at firefighting tho tbh. Do you like it and did it scratch the itch at all.
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u/000111000000111000 After 40 years still learning Mar 27 '25
I've done it before, so it wasn't too big of a deal because I already had all the training requisites. As a nonfirefighting position, it allowed me to give back to my community through the fire department without being too strenuous. During that time I was also a chauffer/driver with departments, however it was nice to stand back a little bit and be behind the scenes.
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u/awolphman Mar 27 '25
You were brave enough to start it and brave enough to end it. Onwards soldier!
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u/Huge_Monk8722 FF/Paramedic 42 yrs and counting. Mar 28 '25
My volunteer department has 31 members. An Auxiliary of 10 and a small waiting list.
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u/wolfgang9996 Mar 28 '25
Side note there was a usually lingering “this is too much work to not get paid” in the back of my mind every time a meeting could’ve been an hour and turned out to be 3 hrs. I appreciate the comments guys, one of the guys in the class who failed before me was wildland- might be more my thing if anything.
Definitely came away with some respect for the job but how the department was run made me think a lot of outmoded ways of doing things was just masked as “tradition” even if it didn’t really work.
They’d spend weeks planning a pancake breakfast fundraiser and expect everyone to attend and then make like $4000. I was like for fucks sake not only are we working for free we have to raise our own money to work for free.
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u/zoidberg318x Mar 27 '25 edited Mar 27 '25
The handful of people who kill themselves with work family and volunteering so the county can pay its comissioners thousands, tax cuts to industry, and pay a cop $80k and call it righteous volunteering may have gave you the wrong idea.
The truth is there is very few places that need volunteers. My chief says it best when we ask what the cities answer is to us constantly running out of ambulances and scrambling to get one on scene
"We're too good at making it work"
It's not your fault at all. Volunteering has been dead for a decade or more. Your only mistake was helping scab the wound that is the VFD in these counties that now make an ass ton of revenue compared to 50 years ago.
Eventually the counties that just bought a $800k tank for the $70k a year deputies are gunna have to face the music on the guys working for free and "making it work"
You can volunteer to help the community and firefight and it is honorable, but I promise you there is no point in time a politician will ever admit they can afford it now and just volunteer to pay its free employee.
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u/Taiil0r Mar 27 '25
Crybaby. We all juggle a lot too. Very few of us had an easy path laid out for us to finish fire 1 lol. We all have lives and struggles. Get your kitchen fixed, get some physical therapy and care for your family. Later on if you change your mind try again or don’t
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u/Slappy-Sacks Mar 27 '25
“People don’t think it be like it be, but it do.” -T. Pain