This is the second of a three-part series exploring the ongoing efforts of the Franklin Fire Company to get a new firehouse built in Mansfield Township.
By: William Wichert
Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part series exploring the ongoing efforts of the Franklin Fire Company to get a new firehouse built in Mansfield Township. This article will focus on the prospect of hiring paid staff for the first time in the volunteer company’s history. Next week’s article will provide a profile of the members who give of their time to keep the fire company going.
MANSFIELD It’s the middle of another day at work on the farm or at the construction site, when the pager attached to your pants starts shaking with a message: Fire! Go to the station immediately! Report to duty!
The thousands of people across the country that answer that call on a daily basis are volunteer firefighters men and women who routinely leave their jobs, strap on their gear, and head out to risk their own lives for the sake of their communities.
At the Franklin Fire Company on Atlantic Avenue, the number of calls has increased with the growing township population, but the number of volunteers answering them has not.
Now amid the ongoing debate over where to build a new headquarters and substations, fire officials are looking at the falling numbers in their own ranks and the possibility of hiring some paid firefighters for the first time in the company’s 145-year history.
"Every year, we lose volunteers," Fire Chief Sean Gable told the Township Committee at its Feb. 9 meeting. "We need to have career staffing during the daytime to protect our community."
The Township Committee said it may have finally selected the location for a new headquarters, but residents at the meeting spoke of the need also to build a substation in the Mapleton development on Route 68. The problem, Chief Gable said, is that the fire company does not have enough members to run two stations.
That dilemma is the result of every volunteer firefighter’s struggle to both make a living at a day job, while also balancing the responsibilities of being part of a fire company. As many members at the Franklin Fire Company have to seek out better jobs, they have been forced to cut back on their availability as a company member.
Chief Gable said the fire company still retains about 50 members, but many of them have moved on to jobs that prevent them from being at the firehouse. Of that 50, there are about 25 men who are certified to wear air packs, but only between six and 10 may be available on a given day to answer calls, he said.
"You don’t know what our response time will be during the day," he said in a phone interview last week. "If we want to get three or four guys to answer a call, we need to have 12 or 15 who are certified to answer a call."
With many of the current members still working in the surrounding area, the response time for a typical fire call is an average of between 10 and 12 minutes, Chief Gable said. But given that the response time of a volunteer fire company is never an exact science, the chief said, the company still needs some paid staff members whose availability is guaranteed.
For hire in Bordentown
Two men who definitely understand the time-consuming work of being a volunteer firefighter are Bob MacFarland and Curt Vanmater. Both of them became officers with the Franklin Fire Company after at least 10 years of service, and both have since received jobs with Fire District 2 in Bordentown Township.
They still consider themselves to be Franklin Fire members, but neither of them is able to answer many calls, because of the hours spent working in Bordentown.
"If I’m available to take a call, I take a call," said Mr. MacFarland, who joined the volunteer company in 1986 as a 16-year-old junior member. "You hear the call go out, and you debate whether or not you can go."
Faced with other obligations, volunteer firefighters have always gone through that personal debate. After responding to several calls a couple of years ago, Mr. MacFarland said he remembers seeing some of his fellow Franklin members watching the clock at the scene, because they had to pick up their kids from school.
Mr. MacFarland said he never dealt with that specific problem, but he said the time commitment of the volunteer company was one of the major reasons that drove him to seek full-time paid work elsewhere.
"It really affected my home life and my social life," said Mr. MacFarland. "I knew it (reducing my time at the company) would have to come. I knew I couldn’t keep going that strong."
The amount of time he spent at the company only increased when Mr. MacFarland became first assistant chief, a position that demands more requirements and regulations to meet, he said.
As a provisional lieutenant with Fire District 2 in Bordentown, he is able to work 10-hour shifts during the daytime without the added responsibility of attending volunteer meetings and Township Committee meetings at night, he said.
"I’m home every night now and that’s nice," said Mr. MacFarland, who was hired in Bordentown in 2001. After several years spent working as a craftsman in the construction business, Mr. MacFarland said he is now able to make a living doing something that has interested him since he was a kid.
"Other than this, I don’t think I had a career path chosen," he said. "This area’s tough to live in. We’re a suburb of New York and Philadelphia. People can’t afford to have time to volunteer."
Mr. Vanmater said he saw how tough it was to make a living and volunteer at the same time while working on his father’s grain farm on Mount Pleasant Road. The job made for the perfect way to be at the Franklin firehouse at a moment’s notice, but the growing decline in the farming industry forced him to pick a new career, he said.
So when his father told him how he planned on selling the farm that his family bought in the 1950s, Mr. Vanmater said he decided to leave his post as a second assistant chief at the Franklin Fire Company and start a new job in Bordentown last July.
"I’ve got to look at my career," said Mr. Vanmater, who said he was concerned about the welfare of his wife and 19-month-old daughter. "Farming’s kind of a dying thing and I needed something to do."
A growing trend
For volunteer firefighters across the country, the decline in volunteerism and the subsequent shift toward a paid staff at the Franklin Fire Company in Mansfield may seem like nothing new.
The 784,700 volunteers serving in the United States account for 73 percent of all firefighters in the country, but that number has dropped by between 5 and 10 percent since 1983, according to the 2003 Fact Sheet of the National Volunteer Fire Council.
The National Volunteer Fire Council states that this drop in volunteerism is due to "increased time demands, more rigorous training standards, and the proliferation of two-income families whose members do not have time to volunteer," according to the Fact Sheet.
Burlington County Fire Marshal Robert Rose said being a volunteer is not something that attracts younger generations. With a required training program of about 125 hours spread over 15 weeks, many people are not interested, he said.
"They don’t gravitate to a fire station," said Mr. Rose, who started his career as a 16-year-old volunteer in Morrisville, Pa. "Being a firefighter is physical, requires a lot of training, and is a lot of work."
Many volunteer fire companies, including those in Chesterfield and Florence townships, have hired paid staff members to make up for departing volunteers, he said, but this action may come with a price: by hiring firefighters, many volunteers may be turned off and then leave the company.
"The career guys have been blended in, and the volunteers feel there is a hostile environment against them," said Mr. Rose. "I would like to say I’m totally wrong, but I don’t know."
Mr. Rose said volunteer companies can incorporate paid staff members into their ranks, if everyone understands that they depend on one another. With the decline in volunteerism, the company needs a paid staff and, with budgetary restrictions, the company still needs volunteers, he said.
"Everybody has to understand what each other’s role is in the department," he said.