Should Volunteer Fire Fighters Leave Their Jobs to Respond to Calls?
Now, my opinion is this: what if it was the home or business of the employer, and the fire department couldn't respond, once they lost everything they owned would the opinion change? What do you think? Do you think that the volunteer fire fighters should be able to wear their radios and respond to calls? Or do you agree with the employers?
Personally, I think it's foolish. It's not like they are members of this exclusive club or anything. It's the fire department for pity sakes, and when all you have is volunteers, then it's just as vital and important as paid fire fighters.
I also think it is being irresponsible, to the community and its citizens, and putting their lives and homes in jeopardy. We are not only talking about fire fighters here, let me clarify that the men and women on the departments are also first responders, EMT's and paramedics. They take their training and their positions with extreme seriousness.
One of the departments in a neighboring town has surprise drills for its volunteers. They never know when or where they will be called and to what kind of emergency they are being called too. The state also has annual training where all departments are required to attend, even monthly meetings within the local departments. Each responder is required to have a 99.9% attendance rate or they are removed from the department.
Published by Patty Kay
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3 Comments
Post a CommentI agree that volunteer firefighter should be able to leave work to attend fire calls. Been a volunteer for 13 years and have left work for major fires to help out. Man power is always an important so if you can leave work then do it. Employers should make exceptions but it isn't to be abused.
I am a volunteer firefighter in Kansas and there are a couple of firefighters that are in this situation. I think they should be allowed to leave for any call because you never know how many will make it to the station and the closest mutual aid maybe 15-20mins away. Or if they are off work next question, Are they in town? There are too many variables but regardless they should be able to leave. Here's a question to the bosses', What if it's your house and nobody showed up because they were at work and couldn't leave? Whole new ballgame then but it boils down to people saying It won't happen to me. I've heard it time and time again then it does and we couldn't get there fast enough that crap pisses me off.
In my opinion, it would depend on the fire company, with the number of members consist in the compan and their schedules, during the day, most of them probably work so it's hard to get a crew together to go on the truck during the day. Think about it, it is a fire department they help to keep the community together, in other words, still standing. So I think there should be exceptions in letting employees leave work for calls. If it's just an EMT call, a box, or something, there's really no need. A dwelling fire, etcetc, is a whole nother story. I'm sure there are ppl out there that abuse their priveledge in being a fire fighter saying that they need 99.9% attendance, although that is not true at all. Different companies i'm sure have different attendance policies but it is not true that you need 99.9% percent attendance to keep your spot/rank in a fire company.