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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1543 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 18, 2025

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Today the local volunteer fire department had this on their sign:

Odd hours

No pay

Cool hat

Join us

Which sort of begs the question: how in the world do volunteer fire departments exist, especially when there are non-volunteer departments in the same area? Don't they get tired of showing up to calls where someone had a heart attack and so in addition to an ambulance the fire department has to show up too for whatever reason? And how do they even find the time? They all have to work full time, and firefighters presumable skew young and without passive income.

Which sort of begs the question: how in the world do volunteer fire departments exist, especially when there are non-volunteer departments in the same area?

I live in area with volunteer and government supported fire departments. I have been told it is almost impossible to join the government supported fire department without experience. So a lot of young folks join the volunteer fire department as a way to get that experience. Same reason a lot of young folks become EMTs because they plan to apply to med school. Of course, many people change life course so people who intended to move on from being EMTs or volunteer fire fighters end up sticking with it rather than moving on.

I can't speak for every one, but my local volunteer fire department also has a small dormitory for the on call firefighters, and they heavily advertise it as free room and board for students attending local colleges. I think you only need to be on call something like 3/4 nights a week to be allowed to live there for the semester. I actually kind of wish I knew about it when I was in college.

Here in rural Germany, being a volunteer firefighter is very high-status, and provides excellent networking. And that is on top of, well, getting to play firefighter.

Not a volunteer firefighter but served a decade in an army reserve unit in a European country.

First off the quality of these types of organizations vary massively depending on the volunteers they get. Volunteering and being active can make a major difference, and that does motivate a lot of people.

Excitement is a motivator. Regular life is boring and many strive for something a bit beyond it. You get interesting experiences, great training, action and some great stories.

It is a way of finding a group of guys on a mission. Usually the quality of men is reasonably high, and the team spirit is good.

Compared to other hobbies it is still financially lucrative. Boating, motorcycles or mountaineering are far worse financial decisions than serving in a volunteer organization yet you still get cool toys. Arguably cooler toys than most hobbyists.

For some there is social prestige, for some they want to show that they are tough and manly and not just weak office workers. Some want to escape their regular lives, others want to break the monotony of 9-5 office work.

Not a volunteer firefighter but served a decade in an army reserve unit in a European country.

Don't army reserves get paid for training time? (Admittedly at pro-rata to regular army, which works out well below-market) They do in the UK.

Sweden and Finland barely pay at all. Mass conscript militaries don't really pay troops.

I have a friend that volunteers as a firefighter. One of the disappointing stories he told me was that they were recently told they needed to comply with newly invented needless bureaucratic safetyist paperwork that the regular firefighters have to deal with. Except those guys are paid for it. He said it was really taking the shine off their volunteer work.

I don't blame him for reconsidering. People volunteer because they enjoy what they are doing. Knowing bureaucrats in the public service that have mandated this extra paperwork, they would not know or care about the downstream impacts on manpower that their decision will make.

At least until there's a volunteer manpower shortage and they either pay someone to comply with the onerous amount of boring administration or they wind the requirements back.

So frustrating. High trust, community focused volunteering that contributes to social cohesion and the govt is taking it for granted. Mindless.

At least until there's a volunteer manpower shortage and they either pay someone to comply with the onerous amount of boring administration or they wind the requirements back.

As discussed in the thread, in the specific case of volunteer fire departments this is a long way off. Most volunteer departments use their market power to insist that the volunteer firefighters spend a lot of time fundraising when they signed up to fight fires - given the bullshit nature of most fundraising activity, I suspect filling in safety paperwork may be more socially valuable.

The place where safetyist paperwork requirements have driven out the volunteers is youth activities. Lots of adults want to coach youth sports/lead Scout troops. Not that many want to fill out forms to prove they are not a paedophile.

The place where safetyist paperwork requirements have driven out the volunteers is youth activities. Lots of adults want to coach youth sports/lead Scout troops. Not that many want to fill out forms to prove they are not a paedophile.

Can confirm this. Though here it's more like a race to the safetyist bottom where everyone tries to be slightly more safetyist than everyone else on the logic that, if an injury happens (even if it the clearly was the kid's own damn fault, and it wasn't even that young), they can avoid blame by pointing to the fact that they've done everything they could. It's not helped by the fact that there have been some really silly lawsuit settlements the last few years.

Interesting. Most of the volunteer fire departments I’m familiar with get some funding from the local city, town, or township, which is supplemented by one or two major fundraisers per year.

The place where safetyist paperwork requirements have driven out the volunteers is youth activities.

I don’t think the paperwork has much to do with it. I used to spend a lot of time volunteering to help lead youth activities when I was younger. I’d still love to do it now, but if I were to do so as a childless man, I know some parents would assume I had suspect motives. In today’s environment, no amount of paperwork is going to eliminate those concerns, so I abstain.

At least until there's a volunteer manpower shortage and they either pay someone to comply with the onerous amount of boring administration or they wind the requirements back.

The bureaucrats and politicians won't be sad about that either. People that aren't on the payroll don't have the same levers to pull and thus lack the same sort of patron/client relationships that political types thrive on. Oh, sure, there might be budgetary problems, but that usually just resolves as a referendum on property taxes that everyone dutifully agrees need to be raised.

My volunteer fire department is currently not accepting more people to their wait list!

There's many small reasons for that, among them: people think it's cool, it's fun training/working with heavy machinery, they party extremely hard, among the best local networks/old boys clubs available, looks good on CV.

There's also more material incentives, like they pay for your trucking licence (so you can operate the heavy fire trucks), power boat licence and things like first-responder medical licences - but in the end, nobody quits after getting those perks.

they party extremely hard

Aren't they on call?

No, not all of them, not all the time.

Each local fire department has a big, public summer party here, for fundraising and to say thank you to the volunteers. Those parties are never at the same weekend, and all firefighters visit each other's parties.

Also, after big exercises, sometimes a wild keg appears...

Still, everybody jokes that you could burn all the fire departments down to the ground as long as there's a summer party somewhere in a 50 mile radius. It's probably true.

Years ago, a fire broke out in the next town over during their annual festival. Their own volunteer firefighters didn’t even leave the bar, even though it was directly across the street from the station. Instead, the fire departments from two neighboring towns showed up to douse the blaze.

They work well in rural, tight-knit, high-trust environments where plenty of young to middle-aged men work on farms or in small factories or shops close to the station (that is, they don’t commute to the nearest city for a desk job). Which is to say, the system worked extremely well for over a century but is starting to fail now in many locations. In some cases, this is because the close-knit and high-trust part is less true than it once was, while in others, the population density has fallen to the point that there aren’t enough people to keep things going. On that note, though, it usually doesn’t take a huge number of volunteer firefighters per station, as multiple neighboring stations will be called out to fight larger blazes.

It’s also possibly worth noting that volunteer firefighters in some areas receive health benefits to compensate them for their work. That makes the position much more attractive for self-employed individuals, including farmers. It’s the same reason a lot of rural self-employed people also work as part-time school bus drivers. The pay and hours kind of suck, but the health insurance makes it worthwhile.

This raises an interesting question of just how distortionary an effect the US healthcare system(with employer paid insurance) actually is, and what the biggest effect is- my guess would be a drag on productivity by suppressing entrepreneurship, but it could easily be employment limitations to get around having to pay health insurance under the definition of full-time.

I live in a community like this in the rural midwest. The volunteer FD is pretty popular and they have no trouble getting people to sign up. That being said, there is a...certain type of person very attracted to the VFD that make up a good % of the volunteers. They are people that are really, really into first-responders and the military but couldn't actually make it in the professional PD/FD/Military for various reasons, either washed out of the academy/training/boot camp, can't meet the physical requirements, or have medical issues. The VFD gives these, often very patriotic and civic minded, people an outlet for their desire to serve the community. They get really into it with a CB radio in their personal vehicle and often a little red hazard light too. They wear their VFD clothing/uniform all the time too.

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