Oregon Coast firefighters see call volumes increase as volunteer numbers drop

Firefighters along the Oregon Coast say they’re struggling to meet increased call volumes with fewer and fewer volunteer staff. A group of North Coast fire chiefs requested to meet with the Daily Astorian about the issue, saying it’s reached “a breaking point.” They say staffing struggles aren’t unique to the region, or even the state, but they hit particularly hard in smaller departments that are primarily staffed by volunteers.

Jeff Adkins is a battalion chief and acting fire chief at the Coos Bay Fire Department and Marc Reckmann is the fire chief for Cannon Beach Fire & Rescue. They join us to talk about the challenges firefighters are facing and how they plan to address them.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross in for Dave Miller. Fire departments around the country rely heavily on volunteers. The National Volunteer Fire Council says 65% of all firefighters in America do the work for no pay. The number of people who step up to do that work, however, has been flagging for a while. The number of volunteer firefighters is down by 200,000 since 1984. Some districts on the Oregon Coast say that’s made it hard to be as responsive as they want to be. Some even say they’re at the breaking point. Here to talk more about the volunteer shortage is Jeff Adkins, acting fire chief with the Coos Bay Fire Department and Marc Reckmann, fire chief of Cannon Beach Fire and Rescue. Jeff Adkins and Marc Reckmann, welcome to Think Out Loud.

Jeff Adkins: Thanks for having us.

Norcross: Jeff, let’s start with you. How short are you right now?

Adkins: We would like to have around 25 on our roster. Right now, we’re about 12, a significant decrease for us.

Norcross: When you’re staffed up at 25, what percentage of your staff is actually volunteers?

Adkins: They put us roughly about 60% volunteer.

Norcross: Oh, boy. So you’re really running slim right now. Has the situation gotten worse recently?

Adkins: Over the last 5-10 years we’ve definitely seen a lot more of a decrease in volunteerism. A lot of that is from the longer term volunteers that we used to have have retired and we just have not seen the same increase or continued involvement with volunteers.

Norcross: What about you, Marc Reckmann? How much of your staff is made up of volunteers?

Reckmann: We’re primarily volunteer. We only have three admin and then three line [firefighters] that are paid and then the rest are volunteers. Unfortunately, we’ve gone from having 25 volunteers 10 years ago to having 14 today. And we only have four that actually live in our fire district. One of the biggest problems we have is the cost of housing is forcing our volunteers out of the community. They’re having to move to other areas that are less expensive to live [in].

Norcross: I find it interesting that you both ideally have 25 volunteers on your staff. Jeff, you’re down to 12. Marc, you’re down to 14. You have basically the same problem and the same numbers that you’re dealing with. Are other fire districts up and down the coast seeing the same thing?

Reckmann: Yeah. County is having a lot of problem with this. And a lot has to do, again, with the cost of housing in a lot of areas of Clatsop County. And the area of Clatsop County has turned very much into a tourist destination, and [for] retirement. So I don’t have the younger generation to draw from. Many of our volunteers retired, like Jeff said. They just got [to the] age of retiring and spent 20-30 years in the department and had retired after that time and I don’t have the younger [generation] to draw from, to refill those roles.

Norcross: Jeff Adkins, we’ve heard about the cost of housing out on the coast. We’ve heard about the aging of the population. Now, what other reasons for the shortage are you seeing in your department?

Adkins: I think those are exactly some of the reasons we have here as well. I think there’s just so many more things people do now. Everyone is busy in their lives. And then the other thing is we hold everyone to a higher standard than they probably were held to 40-50 years ago when we used to see a lot higher numbers of volunteerism. It’s not as much of a social club as it used to be. Most of the fire departments have all removed any type of alcohol from the premises. So there’s none of that social interaction that there used to be.

Norcross: There was drinking on the job?

Adkins: No, not necessarily on the job. It was like after training nights, a lot of times that was something they would do. They’d go have a drink with a bunch of the guys afterwards and then they’d go on home. That has been out for, I would say probably close to 20 years now, that that’s become more frowned on and it’s become much more professional appearance or perception now.

Norcross: Well, and more professional expectations too. I understand that you have the same minimum training requirement for volunteers that you have for staff. Is it hard training? Is it a lot of training?

Adkins: It is for us. I, and anyone in Oregon, we follow the Department of Public Safety standards and trainings, and we have standards that we all have to meet as far as training competencies and training hours every two years to maintain your certifications. Someone’s house is on fire, they don’t care if it’s a volunteer or a career firefighter. They expect someone that’s trained. And for line of duty deaths, [a] firefighter [that is] career or a volunteer, they can both die. So there’s definitely risks. We have to maintain high standards of training.

Norcross: Marc Reckmann, you mentioned how many volunteers you have at your department in good times and how heavily you rely on them. I grew up in a little town that had only volunteer firefighters. There were no paid staff at all. And I would hear from time to time that people might be hesitant to sign up with a department that has paid professional staff, like they think, “ok, you’ll manage without me. It would be nice. But you do have people there who have to be there at all times.” Are you encountering that kind of objection?

Reckmann: Not at all. It’s actually quite the opposite. Our volunteers actually really pushed us to get the 24 hour staffing, they’re getting burned out running all the calls. Part of the issue we also have, and I think across the board, Jeff probably has the same issue, is it isn’t just the number of volunteers we have. It’s [the] availability of them. Volunteers can’t just leave their jobs anymore like they used to. It used to be that stores would shut down, little business would shut down and they [would] come to the fire station for a call. Well, now we’re running more medical calls where our calls went up 16% last year. And we just don’t have the availability we used to. And so actually us getting somebody on 24 hours a day was a real push for volunteers to help them out. So that they knew when they came to the fire station that there was somebody here to go with them.

Norcross: You say your department is seeing so many more medical calls than you used to. Why is that?

Reckmann: More population here. I think our driving force is tourism. Our permanent population isn’t increasing but our tourism population is drastically increasing.

Norcross: And why are tourists more likely to make medical calls than residents?

Reckmann: It isn’t that they’re more likely, it’s that there’s more of them here. There’s more people here.

Norcross: Jeff Adkins, given all the circumstances that we’ve been talking about in the environment where you’re trying to recruit volunteers, what is your current pitch? What do you say to convince folks to volunteer for firefighting duty in your district?

Adkins: For us, it is a challenge because with our predominantly career staff, we run on the majority of the calls with medicals or fire hazardous condition calls. So our volunteers [are] not asked to do a lot of call response, so that’s limited for them. But we are getting ready to do a big push with marketing campaigns just to try to get people more into that community minded spirit. Again, see if that will help.

Norcross: Marc, you and other fire chiefs along the coast recently met with the Daily Astorian to talk about the shortage. Why did you do that?

Reckmann: We were trying to get word out, using the Daily Astorian and get word out in kind of local media. Really our shortage [is] countywide. This was a joint effort of all the fire chiefs in Clatsop County. So that was our main message, just trying to get out. It was another recruiting tool that hopefully some people see this and whether they live in Cannon Beach and choose to volunteer in Cannon Beach or maybe in Warrenton or Gearhart. It was just a joint venture of all the fire chiefs.

Norcross: Well, if this doesn’t work, if your recruiting efforts don’t bring in more volunteers, what options do you have?

Reckmann: Keep doing what we’re doing. We’re not going away. We just need some more help, and like Jeff just said, we’re doing some recruiting campaigns as well. And just trying different options. We’ve started [an] out of district program where maybe somebody that lives in an area that doesn’t have volunteers, such as Portland, they can come over and spend some time at Cannon Beach and be part of the Cannon Beach fire, maybe spend a day a week here.

Norcross: Jeff Adkins, last question for you. This seems like a national problem. Are you hearing the same types of problems in other fire districts around the country?

Adkins: Yeah, I think this is a prime example. You have fired two fire departments on different ends of the Oregon Coast and we have the exact same type of problem. This isn’t an Oregon Coast thing. It’s not a state of Oregon thing. It’s a national thing where volunteerism has declined. In 2020 they show a 6% drop in volunteer rates through the National Fire Protection Association. So that’s fairly significant when, like you said, two thirds of the firefighters in the US are volunteer.

Norcross: So anybody who might be hearing this and may be thinking they may well want to give it a try. What should they know?

Adkins: Come to your local fire station. I mean, there’s all kinds of jobs that we could get you into, whether that’s actually fighting fire, being an auxiliary member, helping out clean up after the fire. There’s all kinds of jobs that need to be filled and we can find something for just about anybody.

Norcross: Excellent. Thank you both very much and good luck.

Adkins: Thank you.

Reckmann: Thank you.

Norcross: Jeff Adkins is the acting fire chief for the Coos Bay Fire Department and Marc Reckmann is the fire chief for Cannon Beach Fire and Rescue.

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