Smaller communities struggle to find volunteer firefighters


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STANSBURY PARK – Wildfire season could pick up quickly in Utah as the state warms up and dries out, but most of Utah’s rural departments face a severe shortage of volunteers, who are the first line of defense. Unfortunately, volunteers in those communities are harder to find every year.

“If we have a wildfire season anywhere near last year, we’re going to just run the crews ragged,” says Chief Randy Wilden of the North Tooele Fire District. “It’s just tough to maintain volunteer ranks.”

The North Tooele Fire District is like a lot of other rural fire departments in Utah – they fight everything from house fires to wildfires. Like many other volunteer departments in the Beehive State, they face a severe shortage of volunteers.

“If we have a structure fire, we need 25 to 30 hands on it,” says Wilden.

His roster is far short of that.

A dozen years ago, North Tooele Fire District had 50 active volunteers. Now, fewer than 10, and many of those volunteers work in Salt Lake County, which requires a longer response time for the volunteer.

“When you have volunteers working on the other side of the mountain – 30, 40 miles away at a full-time job – we get a daytime fire call, it’s hard for us to be able to muster enough people to go,” says Wilden.

Why are our rural communities losing volunteer firefighters?

“We’ll do a little over 1000 runs this year,” said Chief Wilden. “Some of the volunteers just burn out.”

The North Tooele Fire District is looking for volunteer firefighters. In fact, most of Utah’s rural departments face a severe shortage of volunteers, and fire chiefs say they are harder to find every year. (Photo: Jed Boal, KSL TV)
The North Tooele Fire District is looking for volunteer firefighters. In fact, most of Utah’s rural departments face a severe shortage of volunteers, and fire chiefs say they are harder to find every year. (Photo: Jed Boal, KSL TV)

Others cannot commit to the more than 300 hours of training it takes to get certified, and Wilden says there are no shortcuts.

“You’re sending firefighters into a terrible scenario, and if they’re not up to speed on current training methods, from my standpoint it’s very scary,” he says.

Once they’re on the roster, they have to be ready to commit to answering the call. The department’s most recent recruit knows a lot of his peers aren’t up for the time commitment.

“Just the time that you have to put into being here, and the time that you have to put in to actually going on calls,” says Cody Colovich.

Colovich is the most recent volunteer firefighter recruit with the North Tooele Fire District. He grew up in the Tooele Valley and wanted to volunteer to fight fires because he has other first responders in his family, and his father worked on the ambulance.

He is still a senior in high school, and started working at the fire department as an intern.

His message to anyone considering a volunteer firefighting commitment: “It’s very important to the community. People look up to you. I would just say do it.”

North Tooele Fire District Chief Randy Wilden says he's looking for volunteer firefighters to sign on with his agency. (Photo: Sean Estes, KSL TV)
North Tooele Fire District Chief Randy Wilden says he's looking for volunteer firefighters to sign on with his agency. (Photo: Sean Estes, KSL TV)

The North Tooele Fire District has agreements with neighboring departments to help each other in need, but those departments are in the same position.

If someone calls 911 to report a fire, it’s these volunteer apartments that are going to find out first, and they’re almost always first on scene,” says Jason Curry, public information officer with Utah Department of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands.

The 50 to 60 percent decline in volunteer firefighters statewide started at least a decade ago, he says.

The inter-agency wildland fire network depends on our rural departments, like the North Tooele Fire District, to keep wildfire ignitions from growing into catastrophic fires.

“They cover most of the state,” says Curry. “Our volunteer firefighters are the ones that get to the scene first on most of these fires.”

As a result, he says, statewide firefighters keep those early ignitions from growing to 10 acres in size in 98 percent of the fires. To keep that track record going, most of Utah’s rural fire departments are looking for men and women to step up to train to protect their communities from fire.

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