Lets begin

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Permalink Reply by Deborah on October 14, 2007 at 8:17pm

I vote for Volunteers to remain on Depts. Paid Firefighters are stretched thin as it is... Taking away volunteers, could be detrimental not only to the smaller communities who depend on their local fire departments but for the larger one's when man-power is needed. Legislation -- think twice before you change it... your community could be threatened as well...

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Permalink Reply by Ray Crane on October 16, 2007 at 10:15pm

I agree we need to be careful because I don't want to take away from the paid departments. I just want to protect the volunteers. At our recent Chiefs meeting our local sheriff announced that effective immediately volunteers were no longer to have any leeway and anyone caught over the speed limit even on a life and death medical run would be ticketed. He even wanted the apparatuses to drive the speed limits, as if we don't have enough trouble getting through traffic. The Chiefs stopped the latter but we now have to watch even more closely to the posted limit and stay under it even if everyone else is driving 10-15 over.

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Permalink Reply by Tim "snowman"hileman on April 3, 2008 at 6:26pm

why are volunteers being considered to be removed in your departments?

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Permalink Reply by Tim "snowman"hileman on April 3, 2008 at 6:30pm

in most departments in oregon volunteers or reserves which ever way you word it are not allowed to drive that fast. the public isn't even allowed to drive that fast

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Permalink Reply by Alan Shaw on October 11, 2009 at 7:27pm

There are existing organizations but they are department based and not firefighter based. The needs of a department are not always one in the same with the needs of individual firefighters. However, before we go trying to effect change, we need to make sure that change is in fact what we want.

Think of the twin standards of NFPA 1710 & 1720. From what I have read this was originally going to be one standard. Then some language was brought in that was basically unlivable for the majority of VFD's. The answer was to create a different standard. Now given this environment, it is very hard for any of us to claim that we are the same as career firefighters, except for the paycheck. Every time we lobby for a reduced training requirement or fitness standard we are in fact telling people that we can not meet the original standard. What we need to do is try and work at keeping standards to a single manageable format and not a lesser parallel one. Then it will be much more difficult for anyone to argue against volunteer fire departments or volunteer firefighters, unless we are not meeting our own standards.

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