How do you balance the needs of your department with the demands of the community?

Question

Robert Verhelst · Answer

It's a great question because when you work with a career Department, it's different than a volunteer department. And with career departments, we always have to work with the budget that the city brings down. And the biggest thing that you have to really look at, when you look at the demands of the department is start from the ground up. I'm a front line worker. I've been a fireman for sin for over 20 years and so understanding that those demands need to be met first because those rigs in the tools don't work without those individuals. Having what they need to be able to succeed. Same applies. Actually when you go to the volunteer departments and you think about what you need to have for individuals who are working within your community and living within your community, to be able to respond at a moment's notice to emergencies within that community. And I think that's always going to be a struggle in the fire service and as we see our numbers kind of dwindled down, it's looking at at the demands are stressful on the individuals themselves and as the budgets get smaller, you need to look at the basics of what you need to succeed and continue to succeed and at the same time, lift up the individuals that are helping to create a better community.

Dave Robertson · Answer

How do you balance the needs of the department with the demands of the community? Well, the fire service is actually at a tipping point right now with this. The community at large has demanded that we essentially show up for absolutely any possible emergency. From a stubbed toe, I've actually gone on that call a number of times, on up to these massive hazardous material incidents or huge fires, multi-car accidents, etc. There are 10, 11, 12 different rescue disciplines plus hazmat plus emergency medicine. The community has demanded that. We've met that so far. But like I said, we're at a tipping point. There's only so much that we can train on. There's only so much expertise that we can get. Larger urban departments have the ability to break off and have specialized rescue teams, hazmat teams, a whole EMS division like say in the FDNY, they have FDNY EMS. But most fire departments do not. They don't have the bandwidth for that. So you find firefighters with a training schedule over the span of a year that is massive, it is robust, and they just don't have the bandwidth to take all that in. So I don't think we're exactly meeting the demands that the community wants right now. We're kind of at that point. It's almost too much.

Patrick Fitzgibbons · Answer

Well, it's a balance that every department faces. Obviously, the needs of the community are very important, but so are the needs internally, meaning with the department members. So you balance the needs by taking care of your department members as well as the community, but you need to take care of your department members first or they're not going to be 100% to take care of the community. Physical and mental well-being are paramount to our first responders. So if you do that well, they're going to be able to meet the needs and challenges that the community comes to with every day. And it's ever-changing, but we need to take care of our members better than we have been and everything else should fall into place. Hopefully I answered your question. Have a good day.

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"How do you balance the needs of your department with the demands of the community?"