Why Does Northern Vignia Still Have Volunteer FD's?

[Jacob99]

Lorton, Woodbrige and Dale City all have volunteer FD's, but they all seem to be highly populated areas.

Aren't there cities covered by the County FD/EMS? What function do the volunteer FD's serve?

Forgive me if my question sounds ignorant, I'm new to the area and just trying to get a feel for things.

 

[jim202]

Lorton, Woodbrige and Dale City all have volunteer FD's, but they all seem to be highly populated areas.

Aren't there cities covered by the County FD/EMS? What function do the volunteer FD's serve?

Forgive me if my question sounds ignorant, I'm new to the area and just trying to get a feel for things.

It takes more money to run a full time paid department. Have you looked at the budget and tax base of those areas your questioning?

What ever you pay for a salary or wages for the year, it takes at least 1/4 to 1/3 more for the overhead of medical expenses, vacation and the general cost of maintaining that employee. Don't forget overtime pay.

Add it up, then come back after doing your homework. Let us know just what you found out and what you addition provided.

 

[Jacob99]

Thanks for the reply Jim. I'm not familar with the tax bases of those areas yet (but it looks like I'll soon be living there.)

No doubt Volley FD's are cheaper, but I think PW County has Fire/EMS services, so I am wondering why the cities don't just dump the responsibility on those crews.

Edit: http://www.pwcgov.org/government/dept/FR/Pages/Directions-to-Stations.aspx

Looks like I got this all wrong. Those cities are only served by their volunteer FD's; the County doesn't have full-time Fire/EMS services. Still find it odd that an area this highly-populated has volleys. Here in Ohio that would be unheard of.

So are any of these stations manned 24/7, or are these traditional volunteers? On my scanner it sounded like somebody was at the stations.

 

[n5ims]

One thing to check out is what ratio of paid vs volunteer firefighters do they have. It may be that they're volunteer to allow them to save on having extra staff available for those larger fires or times when several fires are going on. WIth the unpaid folks on the staff, this extra manpower can be fairly easily sent to assist without the cost of extra staff or equipment. A few pagers and paging system is much less than even one extra rig and the cost to staff it 24/7/365.

Some vol departments have a full paid staff for the normal day shift and only one or two for the night shift. This can save quite a bit on cost and provide normal coverage when most folks are at work (and may not be able to respond) while at other times allow the equipment to reach the fire quickly to set up while the vols rush in to work the assignment.

 

[BoxAlarm187]

Looks like I got this all wrong. Those cities are only served by their volunteer FD's; the County doesn't have full-time Fire/EMS services. Still find it odd that an area this highly-populated has volleys. Here in Ohio that would be unheard of.

So are any of these stations manned 24/7, or are these traditional volunteers? On my scanner it sounded like somebody was at the stations.

Looks like you're speaking specifically about Prince William County, so I'll shed some light on their situation.

Virtually every apparatus and fire station in the county is owned by the volunteers, however, they're not staffed by the volunteers 24/7. The County's DFRS (Division of Fire & Rescue Services) employs more than 400 full time employees, up to, and including the county fire chief. These full time county employees staff some fire stations during the day time hours only, while they staff other stations 24/7. They also staff several ALS ambulances on a 24/7, which are county-owned and county-lettered. Keep in mind that most of these individual VFD's have a LOT of money, a lot of rigs, and a handful of large stations as well.

The stations that are career-staffed during the daylight hours only are staffed with volunteers at night and weekends. There are both career and volunteer battalion chiefs as well.

A couple of years ago, the county's board of supervisors disbanded one of the county's VFD's and took over their buildings and equipment, so now they have rigs lettered for the county, but still painted in the previous VFD's scheme.

One things that's different in Virginia than every every other state in the nation is that our cities are completely independent of counties. Cities can lie within a county, or outside of a county, but they don't share services unless they're under contract to do so. The City of Manassas (within PWC) still has a very strong and proud volunteer commitment, whereas the City of Manassas Park just down the street is a fully career department. The career staff at both of these departments are employed by their respective city government, but are dispatched by PWC, and work seamlessly with the county folks on a daily basis.

Ultimately, it comes down to the county getting a heck of a bargain with the volunteers providing services and apparatus to the citizens and back to the DFRS. I can't say that there aren't some rocky roads between the career and volunteer staff, but what combination department doesn't have that?

Also, there are still active volunteer departments within Fairfax, Loudoun, and Arlington County as well.

Really want your socks knocked off? Take a look at how the all-volunteer Kentland VFD in Prince George's County, MD (immediately north of DC) is doing over 5000 runs a year, and has been for a decade.

Volunteering in the mid-atlantic is a little different than what you might be used to.

EDIT: I see you might be moving there. Be prepared for a very high cost of living unless you're willing to commute from some distance away!

 

[datainmotion]

Wirelessly posted (Clacking rocks together: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; en-us; DROID X2 Build/4.5.1A-DTN-150-30) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Similar situation here in parts of Metro Denver. Quite a few VFDs still exist and do their job very well with limited funding.

 

[lep]

It is often more correct to call some Fire depts as Full Time and others as Part Time. Since, at least where I live the "volunteers" are still paid per-fire for each time they are deployed to a working fire, to me that makes them part time fire fighters.

Why does a large part of the USA still have 'volunteers'? Easy, the tax payers won't fund the departments adequately to pay the salary of Full Time fire fighters.

Just today I listened on my scanners in my city as a structure Fire had dispatched: Battlation 1, Ladder 1, Engine1, Engine 3...all from Station 1 {a Full Time station with paid personnel}, Battaion 1 assumed incident command and Station 9 {volunteers, i.e. paid per inicdent} were paged to respond with Engine 99, CAFE 2, were requested as backup.

After 3 hours, the Fire incident was declared closed, command terminated and all personnel returned to duty at their respective stations. The Station 9 personnel went back to their planned weekend activities and Station 1 personnel went back to whatever fire fighters do, cleaning equipment etc.

BTW my city is an ISO class 3.

 

[BoxAlarm187]

It is often more correct to call some Fire depts as Full Time and others as Part Time. Since, at least where I live the "volunteers" are still paid per-fire for each time they are deployed to a working fire, to me that makes them part time fire fighters.

You're referring to POC (Paid-On-Call) departments. There are very few POC departments in Virginia, here, volunteers are volunteers for the most part.

 

[lep]

You're referring to POC (Paid-On-Call) departments. There are very few POC departments in Virginia, here, volunteers are volunteers for the most part.

Here, the departents you describe are "subscription departments", that is they will only respond to a Fire at a location that has prepaid a subcription, unless of course Life (not property) is in danger.

A Query, just for my info: Our non-Full TIme paid departmetns are called "Volunteers" , they have special state issued license plates, permits for RED warning lights, etc. However, someone takes a roll call when they arrive on scene and they get a fee for that deployment in a quarterly check.

Do your volunteers receive NO compensation? Who pays for the radios? For the fuel for the rolling stock?
Who pays for the expendibles used at a Fire?

Just curious.

 

[BoxAlarm187]

Do your volunteers receive NO compensation? Who pays for the radios? For the fuel for the rolling stock?
Who pays for the expendibles used at a Fire?

Virginia is a large state, and funding varies from department-to-department and locality-to-locality.

I've been with my current volunteer department for 18 years. Since 1983, the county government has paid for our vehicles, fuel, protective equipment, insurance, and virtually all other items of daily use. They started building our fire stations in 2000. They find a benefit in keeping us well equipped in exchange for not having to have to pay career staff. We receive NO personal compensation, aside from the department giving us uniforms to wear and perhaps an award at our annual banquet.

I've served with two other volunteer departments in the past. One of them was exactly the same (county paid for everything), while the other got a check from the county government once a year, to spend as they deemed necessary. This is actually a popular way of doing things in several areas of the state.

Some counties use a tax levy, where the monies collected by the levy go directly to the fire station which serves that community.

The further southwest you go in Virginia, there is FAR less tax base, and the VFD's do struggle to survive. I have a friend that's a chief at a VFD that operates on $6000/year, and $3000 of this goes to their insurance policy. Hard to operate on anything but used and donated vehicles and gear with that kind of budget.

Here, the departents you describe are "subscription departments", that is they will only respond to a Fire at a location that has prepaid a subcription, unless of course Life (not property) is in danger.

POC and subscription departments are not the same thing, although some subscription departments can elect to give their members a stipend as you described. POC's will still respond any time they're summoned, not based upon receipt of a payment before the call comes in.

 

[Jacob99]

Thanks all. I think I get it now.

Looks like you're speaking specifically about Prince William County, so I'll shed some light on their situation.....

.....EDIT: I see you might be moving there. Be prepared for a very high cost of living unless you're willing to commute from some distance away!

Thanks for the detailed response, BoxAlarm. I find it very interesting how the volunteers and paid staff work together. Coming from Ohio, the organization of the safety crews (based on what I hear on my scanner) is certainly very different.

And so is cost-of-living, as you said. Housing has been a bit of a shock, that's for sure. And then little things like going from $10 for a good seat at a minor league hockey game to $50 for a lousy seat at a Caps game. But there's lots of things Northern Va. has to offer that Ohio doesn't, so we shall see.

 

[fredva]

Why does a large part of the USA still have 'volunteers'? Easy, the tax payers won't fund the departments adequately to pay the salary of Full Time fire fighters.

There are many rural, lightly populated areas which only have a fire call once or twice a week, if that. In such communities, it's not really feasible to pay people a full-time salary to be on duty 24/7. The return on the investment for a full-time firefighter in a station that gets 15-20 calls a day is going to be different than one that goes a couple months before getting the same number of calls.

 

[jhooten]

Here, the departents you describe are "subscription departments", that is they will only respond to a Fire at a location that has prepaid a subcription, unless of course Life (not property) is in danger.

Just curious.

And to me that is simply despicable.

 

[Nitsud]

Really want your socks knocked off? Take a look at how the all-volunteer Kentland VFD in Prince George's County, MD (immediately north of DC) is doing over 5000 runs a year, and has been for a decade.

Volunteering in the mid-atlantic is a little different than what you might be used to.

EDIT: I see you might be moving there. Be prepared for a very high cost of living unless you're willing to commute from some distance away!

If you think Kentland is so cool, you should check out Bladensburg Station 9 in PG. They have been completly volunteer PLUS they run two ambos as well, something kentland cannot do.

Just bragging...

 

[zerg901]

Just to recap -

"Volunteers" are sometimes paid, sometimes they are not

"Volunteers" sometimes are on duty at the station; often they are on call at home or work or wherever

I think that totally unpaid "volunteers" are more common in the southeastern USA than in other areas

The United Kingdom has historically had - wholetime (paid / fulltime), retained (paid on call), and a very few volunteers (no pay). They are starting to alter some of this arrangements in some areas now.

IIRC all the firefighters in Argentina are "volunteers".

 

[lep]

And to me that is simply despicable.

Of course if a subscription department would respond to Every incident, why would anyone buy a subscription? You could just take a chance that there would be no fire, but if there was, you could purchase a subscription on-the-spot. This has historicallybeen tried and won't financially work.

The ones I know of will Always respond, subcriber or not, if Safety of Life is involved, but not just property. As Fire Insurance is really just "property insurance" there no indemnity for loss of life in fire insurance.

You might be interested in reading about the History of Fire insurance Protection, such as in Colonial times the use of Fire Marks in Philadelphia to show which Company insured which building, to know whether or not the Fire company should respond.

 

[reconrider8]

plain and simple would you rather pay for someone to keep your house safe OR just use the tax money to keep our equipment upgraded and what not? plain and simple i would much rather Truly volunteer then get paid to fight fires I love what i do and i don't do it for the pay or fame

 

[jhooten]

Of course if a subscription department would respond to Every incident, why would anyone buy a subscription? You could just take a chance that there would be no fire, but if there was, you could purchase a subscription on-the-spot. This has historicallybeen tried and won't financially work.

The ones I know of will Always respond, subcriber or not, if Safety of Life is involved, but not just property. As Fire Insurance is really just "property insurance" there no indemnity for loss of life in fire insurance.

You might be interested in reading about the History of Fire insurance Protection, such as in Colonial times the use of Fire Marks in Philadelphia to show which Company insured which building, to know whether or not the Fire company should respond.

Put the (expletives deleted) fire out, send them a bill, and put a lean on the property if you have too. To not respond and risk the fire getting out of hand and spreading is criminally negligent.

The one I though was great was as the trucks were rolling an unidentified voice came up on the channel and said "Disregard their subscription expired last month" It was the 3rd and the owner was away on a family emergency for the previous couple months. To come back from rebuilding your parents flood damaged home to find yours burned to the ground and that no one lifted a finger to stop it, well how would you feel?

 

[lep]

Put the (expletives deleted) fire out, send them a bill, and put a lean on the property if you have too. To not respond and risk the fire getting out of hand and spreading is criminally negligent.

This will be my last comment since the discussion is on the verge of getting too far out of hand. Again, in the cases I know about (which were not in Texas) the Subscription department did answer the call to prevent the fire from getting out of control and from damaging near by property of paid subscribers. Again, in the cases of which I am aware there would be no legal basis for attaching a lien on property when you had no contract to provide fire services to the property in the first place.

The discusison started when I merely was asking about different kinds of departments in various localities.
As part of that discussion I reported my observations about several cases involving subscription departments.
No reason to characterize 'as despicable' the behaviour of fire fighters merely following orders and departmental policy.

 

[W8VFD]

Funding possibilities for Volunteer FD's

Where I live in Andover Ohio our funding is from tax levies, contracts with cities and townships that we serve, and findraisers.