Rural fire departments struggle to recruit volunteers, says fire chief

A New Brunswick fire chief says there aren't enough volunteer firefighters to battle house fires or respond to motor vehicle crashes in rural areas, particularly during the work week.

For years Justin McGuigan, fire chief of the North York Fire Department, said the number of firefighters has dwindled in his region and fire stations are having a harder time recruiting volunteers.

"Everybody can agree more volunteer firefighters are needed, but the problem is the majority of people think that it's somebody else's problem, it's somebody else's job." he said. "They think, 'Well I've got this to do, I've got that to do.'"

This poses a problem for McGuigan and his team of about 25 active firefighters.

"We are migrating in our society toward a "me-focused' frame of mind," he said.

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The North York Fire Department covers Keswick Valley and the village of Millville, 57 kilometres northwest of Fredericton.

McGuigan said the biggest sore point with his firefighters is the response they often get when they ask people to try volunteering: too busy.

"It kind of says, 'My time is more important than yours, what I'm doing is more important than what you're doing," he said in an interview with Information Morning Fredericton.

"As a volunteer organization, something that has such a direct relation to life safety and to saving people's homes needs to be a priority."

In the fall of 2017, more than 145 of the 167 fire departments across the province relied on volunteer firefighters. 

Myths and trends 

Volunteer firefighters have several myths and trends working against them, McGuigan said.

One of those myths is that there are enough people to provide balanced coverage 24 hours a day throughout the year in rural areas.

Over the past 10 years, the number of volunteer firefighters in the area has declined by 25 per cent, he said.

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McGuigan was at home sick when his neighbour's house caught fire in the middle of the afternoon.

That day, three shift workers were at home, and a bus driver was still working in the community. The remaining volunteer firefighters were able to stop the fire before it destroyed the house, he said, but 95 per cent of the time there wouldn't have been enough staff to battle such a blaze.

"That lady's house would've burned to the ground."

We can't stay home to wait to volunteer as a firefighter.-Justin McGuigan, North York fire chief

McGuigan said it's important for the public to understand that during the day [in] rural areas, firefighters are left in uncomfortable situations.

"Because we are volunteers, and we need to go to work. We can't stay home to wait to volunteer as a firefighter."

But throughout the day, he said, a department might have to respond to calls up to 50 minutes away because of a shortage of firefighters. 

This can lead to burnout among firefighters, who are forced to take time off from volunteering.

A shift of people and jobs from rural areas to more urban centres has also affected firefighting.

"With that migration go the jobs, and so there's less and less work in the rural areas of New Brunswick for some of those firefighters, where they used to be able to work in their area and volunteer, so they'd be close to the fire station," McGuigan said.

Mike Walton, president of the New Brunswick Association of Fire Chiefs and fire chief of the Hartland Fire Department, said people in the workforce are also heading to Western Canada to work, making it more difficult to recruit volunteers. 

Trouble maintaining firefighters

Walton said there are 4,500 volunteer firefighters in New Brunswick.  

"You're the centre of volunteerism as far as I'm concerned," he said. 

While fire crews have a hard time recruiting volunteers, they also have trouble maintaining them.

Fire crews need additional equipment and some of it can be shared across the province, McGuigan said.

For example, volunteer firefighters are pushing for a mobile, $1 million burn unit and live-fire trainer equipment to help them practise their skills. 

Firefighters now have to travel great distances for training and, because of increasingly strict regulations, it's harder for firefighters to train on buildings that have been donated to them, McGuigan said.

A mobile burn unit, he said, "allows us to spend two units of time rather than six units of time to get that training, so the other four units can be used to train on other things and to get our other housework done."

The province has promised $500,000 for the burn unit project last summer, and Walton is in Ottawa this week to seek federal funding for it as well. 

"If we had our own, we could train year-round and offer that to 4,500 firefighters," said Walton, who has been working on the project for the past three years. 

CBC News has asked Michael Lewis, the acting fire marshal, for an interview.