The stress is overwhelming.
Volunteer firefighter numbers in New York have hit a troubling 40-year low, with Long Island, where all firefighting roles are voluntary, feeling the severe impact.
“Response times have increased by 10 to 15 minutes,” revealed Joseph Ferrante, the North Massapequa fire chief, to The Post.
“These are lives at stake. Those extra minutes could be the difference in rescuing someone from a blaze,” cautioned Ferrante, who became a firefighter after a quick response saved his father’s life during a heart attack in the 1990s.
The sharp drop in new recruits is alarming, with numbers plummeting from 110,000 to just 70,000 statewide over the past seven to eight years, according to Ralph Raymond, the second vice president of the Association of Fire Districts of New York.
“What used to be a team of six or seven on a truck is now reduced to only four, putting them in precarious situations,” explained Raymond, who is traveling across New York this week to raise awareness, starting with Albany on Wednesday.
The numbers were higher in 1992 when state Sen. Steven Rhoads, an active volunteer firefighter in Wantagh, first enlisted.
“We had somewhere around 125,000,” he said.
“There was a waiting list because there were so many volunteers.”
The volunteer ranks across Long Island are down 5,000 over the last five years — to just 20,000 firefighters.
Things are so dire that Nassau County’s century-old Floral Park Centre Fire Company closed shut in January over lack of staffing.
It’s very disturbing,” Ferrante, the North Massapequa chief, said of the closure.
“We have volunteers that want to do the job, but there’s not enough volunteers to do the job.”
While the volunteer base is dropping off, calls aren’t.
Suffolk County alone saw a recent 37% rise in fire dispatches on top of a 16% increase in working house fires. Rhoads added that Nassau has seen close to 40 working fire calls already this year.
The jarring stats prompted Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, a Republican, to say volunteers are needed “now more than ever.”
There is also growing concern that environmental factors, such as tree-killing beetles, could spark more aggressive wildfires in vulnerable areas like the rural east end of Suffolk, which was already ravaged nearly a year ago and have yet to recover fully.
“It’s concerning,” said Riverhead Councilman Ken Rothwell, an active volunteer in Wading River’s fire department.
Rothwell added that the big blazes will always have mutual aid assistance from other fire departments — Ferrante’s company and others — as far as Elmont on the Queens border, which responded to last year’s wildfires out in Suffolk.
Doing so, however, leaves few firefighters on standby.
“If there’s a small accident, there’s another fire in your hometown, your top responders are in another district fighting,” said Rothwell, who’s been on the job for over two decades.
We didn’t start the fire
It’s not a lack of heroism behind the dismal volumes, but instead a sad truth about the current cost of living.
“Most volunteer firefighters, male or female, are working two jobs,” Raymond said. “They don’t have the time to dedicate to their volunteer fire service.”
Training standards and the time commitment to follow through have also greatly increased from years past, according to Ed Kraus, the deputy chief instructor at the Nassau County Fire Service Academy.
“Years ago, you could join, go through your training, take a week off from work,” he said.
“Now it’s almost three weeks for that same training … they can’t just walk in and say, ‘Hey, boss, I’m taking three weeks off.’ I have to go train to become a firefighter.”
Fired up
Politicians and stakeholders across Long Island are doing what they can to bolster recruiting through incentives — especially appealing to younger men and women trying to make ends meet.
Rhoads also introduced state legislation in late January that would cover tuition at SUNY and CUNY schools for volunteer firefighters, ambulance company members and auxiliary cops.
Raymond is also calling for Albany to pay volunteers who are willing to remain in their firehouses on standby for hours at a time.
“Let’s nominally compensate them $100 to standby for six or seven hours,” he said.
Rothwell also passed local legislation to sweeten the deal in Riverhead, shortening the timeframe for firefighter tax incentive eligibility from five years to two years of service.
“We want to get those younger people who joined the fire department to stay with it,” he said.
“With maybe [departments] investing $10,000 in this individual, and it would be a shame that after they do it for a year or two, and then go, ‘I can’t. I have to work two jobs.’”
