Monday Morning

Every now and then I bring up the topic of minimum requirements for firefighters and EMT's and how they are hurting the rural volunteer agencies.  Everybody agrees that all firefighters need to achieve the basic FF-I, II and III along with the EMT certification.  While it used to be that a probationary member could ride and perform certain functions that are within his qualifications, some areas are drifting to requiring full certifications before they can participate.  This can be a drawn-out affair when it comes to weekend fire schools and not being able to apply your teachings and observe actual emergencies can lead to disinterest and dropping out.

This situation is even more complicated when it comes to emergency ambulance service.  While it is reasonable to achieve the EMT certs necessary without too much inconvenience, when it comes to paramedic level training it becomes onerous to say the least.  For a volunteer that means going to school every weekend for a year while trying to maintain the skills as you progress through the program. Hardly a welcoming prospect for someone who thinks they might be interested in joining.  What makes this so bad is that some counties end up with a Medical Director who arbitrarily decide that all ambulances should be staffed with at least one paramedic and use their authority to make that mandatory.

Now we have areas where emergency ambulance service is but a shadow of what it was before the raise-the-quality crowd got involved.  When faced with the choice of having a basic ambulance or no ambulance, they turn away and ignore the problem they have created and leave the citizens wondering why it takes 35 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.  And month after month goes by with no new applications pinned on the bulletin board.

Politicians are just as bad, if not worse, than the doctors in this game and some rural-area mayors in Ontario are concerned that the provincial government is going to drive their local VFD's to extinction by arbitrarily upgrading certification standards that are designed for full-time paid departments to include the remote rural all-volunteer, 10 calls a month departments.  A recent article in the Petrolia Topic reported:

Lambton Shores' Bill Weber and Warwick Township's Todd Case have asked their fellow rural mayors in Lambton, Huron and Middlesex Counties to meet on Wednesday, Nov. 23 in Thedford.

They plan to share a light lunch and talk about pressures volunteer firefighters and their departments face from increased liability and provincial regulations.

"We have excellent volunteer firemen, they do a terrific job," Case said. "But the liability on these guys today is just incredible." That mounting pressure from the province, and from court proceedings, needs to be addressed, according to the mayors

"Rather than imposing regulations on rural municipalities," the mayors say in their invitation, they would prefer a dialogue with the province that takes into the account the differences between urban full-time fire services and rural volunteer departments.

"The province has to recognize and realize these guys are volunteers," Case said. Some of the new requirements coming down are onerous for rural departments, Weber said.

They all agree that these proposed changes will likely impact their ability to recruit and keep volunteer firefighters.  They also point out that they cannot afford to maintain a paid fire department in their sparsely populated areas.  Read the entire ARTICLE HERE.

And we cannot afford to not get this equipment checked out, so let's get started.  I'm going to fire up some more coffee before we meet back in the day room.

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"Only you can prevent first responder"