Public Safety Alarm Sounding Over Firefighter Shortage In Rural Communities

Two Mills County fire departments are taking a pro-active approach to combat an understaffing epidemic that’s impacting public safety agencies across the country.

The Silver City and Oak Township Fire Departments recently collaborated on a joint grant application to the Iowa Firefighters Association for recruitment materials. The grant was approved and the departments were awarded a package of materials that included a banner to hang outside the fire stations and hundreds of “When Duty Calls, Iowa Answers” postcards that were mailed out last week to households across the departments’ coverage areas.

“We’re trying to get everything from 221st Street east to 330th, which is pretty much where we end, and north of Gaston (Ave.),” said Silver City Fire Chief Greg Stofer.

The number of volunteer firefighters in the United States has been on the decline for decades, creating growing concern about public safety in rural communities across the nation. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)  reported volunteer membership dropping from about 827,000 in 2008 to 635,000 in 2023.

Staffed with five firefighters, Silver City’s department is less the half the size it was 10 years ago.

“A lot of departments see more members, but a lot of those members are non-participatory,” said Stofer. “We absolutely do not have that here – the five that we have are just fantastic responders and are active in pretty much everything.”
NFPA standards suggest at least 15 firefighters respond for a complete first-alarm structure fire.

“I would like to see an active membership of 15 or 16,” Stofer noted. “One of the things that we need to do is establish leaders – not just at the top, but from the top all the all the down to company officers – kind of break it out into a couple different companies.”

Not only are rural departments in need of more firefighters, they’re in need of younger personnel.

“People are getting older – we need younger blood to step in,” said Oak Township Fire Chief Keith Johnson.

Stofer conceded that convincing young people to become firefighters is a challenge.

“You’re asking people to volunteer to do it and everybody works somewhere else and the farm population is down from what it used to be,” he said. “I’ve done some door-to-door recruiting and there’s one place I went and it was pretty much, ‘Leave!’ I get it. There are a number of reasons. It cost so much to live. People get home (from work) and they just don’t think they’ve got the time.”

Oak Township Fire Department Assistant Chief John Stacey said“snagging people under 25 is extremely difficult.”

“We can’t retain them because there’s a lot of demands that are put on these guys,” said Stacey. “They have to give up a lot to get their Firefighter 1 (certification). The state doesn’t make it easy because we have to go when the state has the class. There’s costs involved and with all the activities that surround these young guys anymore, we have to cut a pretty bit piece of that out to get them”
Oak Township has 10 firefighters on its current roster. Neither department responds to calls on its own – when Silver City gets a call, Oak Township responds as well, and vice versa.

“When you say he (Silver City) has five and we’ve got 10, we have 15, but there’s a lot of ‘what-ifs,’ like planting season and 80% of the people work out of town. That’s a challenge,” Stacey noted. “We don’t go out by ourselves anymore and either do they,” he added. “We send both departments. We supplement each other.”

Sharing resources and personnel is becoming more common for rural fire departments. Mills County departments often take classes and conduct training exercises together.

Johnson and Stofer noted that as part of their recruiting initiative, the two departments are getting the word out on social media and doing media interviews.
Johnson said rural departments are certainly operating under different circumstances than when he joined Oak Township in 1997.

“It was a whole community organization,” he said. “We had 30-35 people, but they were local farmers and gradually that has just diminished along with having to implement stringent training standards. Now, during the day, it’s a hard time for all of us.”

Silver City Mayor Joseph Jaworski said he appreciates the dedication of the few who are serving to protect their communities but is concerned about the declining numbers.

“It’s a big concern,” he said. “With how big of an area Silver City and Oak Township cover, that’s very few people to cover such a large area.”

Stofer, Johnson and Stacey agreed that passage of an EMS tax in the November election would be beneficial to both departments. Additional funds would allow the departments to provide more financial assistance to young firefighters as they go through the training and certification process.

“Years ago,the state funded your EMT training and your paramedic training. They don’t do that anymore,” Stacey pointed out. “The amount of hours, every year, picks up and protocols change. An EMT class is around $1,500. That’s a lot to ask for somebody to volunteer and come in and take a class tha’s going to take 6 to 8 months out of you and it’s going to be a struggle.

“What can we do to make it easier for those guys to go to a class and what can we do to fund them to go to those classes? We have to treat people that are coming into this thing a little better.

With or without an EMS tax levy, the chiefs said they’ll continue to look for ways to recruit new firefighters to their departments.