Daytime Staffing

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Permalink Reply by Paul Stoops on August 3, 2009 at 5:00pm

Depends on work schedules. Some of our driver operators are paid firefighters in the Washington DC area or for the Government. It also depends on the time of day.

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Permalink Reply by Josh Van Vlack on August 24, 2009 at 11:01am

Our ambulance is staffed 24/7 with two, but the fire side is all volunteer. We have a couple local business owners who work across the street from the station so our first out engine is normally out the door within 3 min. of the page. The majority of our other volunteers either work in Rapid City, (about 30 min. away) or work in jobs where leaving is severely frowned upon. They still respond, but are often making up run time later in the week. I'm lucky in that most of the time I can be available for calls and normally make the second out or respond POV if its close to where I'm working that day (logging industry). Our saving grace is our automatic aid agreements with the neighboring departments. Automatic aid is dispatched for all confirmed structure fires, and can usually have 4 engines from out neighboring departments in about 15 minutes.

2nd out medical calls are another story. the ambulance lost 80% of the volunteers when the first due van became paid. There was no incentive to respond to calls when you knew the others were getting paid while you were skipping out on your real job, and you would never make it to the hall before they were gone anyway. Now when we get a second medical page or have a need to run our second ambulance it is VERY difficult to get a proper response. we are calling for mutual aid now on medical calls too.

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Permalink Reply by Gregory R Bailey on August 24, 2009 at 1:41pm

Depends on which day of the week. Shift works ect. vary the factor. Thank god for automatic aid. But sometimes they are slim too. Getting our fine dispatch to remeber sometimes is a problem. They are sent on a structure fires. Sometimes on alarms, smoke in the house they do not tone out or MA. It is a ongoing problem. And I know no one has a dispatch problem... yeah right. Be safe come home alive not in a bag.

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Permalink Reply by Dean Shrider on August 26, 2009 at 3:20am

During the day time I want to cringe when the pager goes off not knowing if we will have enough for one truck. With our officers being at work and on there way they go directly to the scene with there povs. Thank goodness for automatic mutual aid its always better to have them on the way and not need them as to not having them and need them.

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Permalink Reply by trevor leseman on August 30, 2009 at 7:22pm

well here at lyons we have 20 volunteers but we have a core group of 5 that show up to just about every call uhm i beleive that if we were to have a working structure fire durring the day it would take us about 6 minuets to get a crew depends on what day it is though and who is in town personaly if i am in town i go on the call no matter what it is and i dont have a need to leave town very often so i make 90% of our calls but i do think that if there wasnt mutual aid we would not be able to do a working structure very easely especialy if it is fully involved

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Permalink Reply by CHRIS on September 11, 2009 at 11:33am

Living near the station,myself and another guy, we can roll a truck within 4 minutes of the call..for an MVA... we might get 4-6 people,EMS is provided by another dept.If it is a fire,depending on the type--structure- during the day is an AUTOMATIC MUTUAL AID call ,brush or otherwise is a sizeup and call for help if need be.At night we generally dont have issues. But we do have the ones that pick and choose their calls.

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Permalink Reply by Chief Mike France on September 25, 2009 at 12:25pm

67 active members, daytime responce 12 , we run AMA from 7am to 5pm Monday thru Friday with 7 other Fire departments responce time for day 5 to 9 mins with a crew of4- 5 on the first rig , if we are lucky 1 chief , 2 of us work aroun the corner if our supervisor allows us to go.

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Permalink Reply by Chris Tomlinson on October 1, 2009 at 9:58am

((((raising hand))))) Staffing issues here and it's a little more sudden. I've been on for 18 years and have never seen it this bad.

At the moment, out of a 30-person roster we're lucky to have 3-5 people available during the day. Two of which are the chief and asst. chief who typically won't be actually fighting fires. We have people on medical leave, personal leave and some who just can't make it because they're stuck with the kids. Honestly if we get a house fire I'm going to be terrified at how bad it could get.

~Chris
Fire Department Web Design

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Permalink Reply by Brandon Eichenlaub on October 28, 2009 at 10:59pm

We can usually get enough people to show up on week ends. however i was a member during high school and during school hours if the alarm went off i would leave school. and that was the only way to get a truck on scene was me and another high school member. now we were the most dedicated members an i only missed two call in my two years of service and that was because i was just too sick to respond. nnow we have other members that have not responded in two years.. and they are always home... so high schoolers and self employed people is the best way to get more responders.

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Permalink Reply by AJ on November 17, 2009 at 8:25pm

My department is pertty good actually with getting the B.R.T.'s out of the house. But... as far as getting intrior guys on the job eh thats really hit or miss usually were pretty good because most of our guys work around the district so if they here a worker go in they leave work and go but if theres not enough men mutual aid is a beautiful thing, our neiboring departments aren't that far away the farthest one in MAYBE 7 miles away if that far.

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