Are fire departments not getting applicants? Outside of volunteer firefighting, it seems like far more than enough people realize how sick career firefighters have it. Get paid to sleep, workout, moonlight, early generous pension, etc. You kidding?
Tens of thousands of people are taking the first step this weekend in the application process to become a Chicago firefighter or EMT, the first time the test has been administered since 2006.
abc7chicago.com
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For my department at least, we get plenty of applicants, because folks think it’s like what you mentioned, though it isn’t entirely. However, a lot of highly qualified applicants.... that’s another story.
When I was hired, roughly 1200 folks tested at the same time I did. 40 of us were hired a little over 6 months later, and 40 or so another year later that didn’t make the cut on the first round.
The issue is, our role has expanded well beyond just firefighting, and with those additional roles comes additional requirements. From physical fitness, lack of criminal background (for state medical license), emotional stability under stress, ability to work well with others, respond quickly to a dynamic environment, and hopefully be able to train to take on whatever additional roles/responsibilities the FD is tasked with during a 20-30 career.
I started about 23 years ago as a volunteer, and 19 years ago as a career firefighter. In that time we have become an increasingly used resource for a lot of things besides just firefighting. We handle just about anything police don’t do (and I see that list growing considerably based on current events.)
A recent example would be opening our stations to anyone having a substance abuse disorder, 24/7 until trained mental health folks can respond to meet with them. We bring them in, and stay with them until on call “mobile crisis unit” can respond, and help to arrange treatment preferably, or a clean/sober shelter for them. We also provide free naloxone to anyone that asks and provide them with a quick training session on how to use it. We are going to be expanding into community health as a handful of departments already have, to provide access to routine/preventative healthcare to folks who can’t get to a doctor, but don’t need to go an emergency room where the care is very expensive, but also very much short term focused. We’re partnering a medic, nurse, and social worker to start, but once it gets going, we’d like to train/certify a select group of medics in the select portions of those other disciplines we currently lack, but need to learn to provide good community health. That way you can reduce the number of folks needed and total cost, even if the medic themselves becomes more expensive in the process. And yes, that will be taught through an accredited school of some sort, likely our community college that also teaches nursing, PA, and other allied health care careers already.
So you need someone with a lot of different traits/skills that can be used or be trained to respond to everything from fires, car crashes, technical rescues, hazardous materials events, medical emergencies and severe injuries, mental health crises, provide public education, the list goes on. We lose a significant number of folks at each step, from academic aptitude testing, in person interviews for attitude/fitness for the varied jobs we do, physical fitness testing, significant background investigations (to include looking for substance abuse history as I can maintain sole control of some very highly regulated drugs, though with auditing and tracking), and extensive medical exam. And at the end of all that, you want a large enough group of suitable folks left to have a somewhat diverse candidate pool to draw from. Having been involved in entry level testing before, our usual applicant pool skews heavily male, but also whiter than our service area. The racial disparity of that is that partially because folks come into the metro area looking for work that is not available, or only available in much smaller and lower paid departments in the outlying rural areas that also are less diverse than our area. And I see a value in having a diverse department to help better understand the needs of a diverse client base.
A lot of our best folks (paramedics especially) also consider nursing careers, or other in demand fields. So salary and benefits have to compete with that to an extent, both at the start and also for retention. Our whole area is constantly in competition to recruit, train and retain medics, and the market price reflects that.As a bit of an aside, a number of medics I rode with went to nursing school also as a potential second job, several more became PAs, and a couple even are now physicians. One now doctor was my partner, long time friend, and best man at my wedding. (He still gets on me about going to med school myself, as he still remembers how I helped him learn pharmacology when he was a paramedic student many years ago, and before I’d had formal training in it myself. )
Finally also keep in mind, for the county I work in, and 3 of our neighboring counties all have a median family income of $100,000 or more, and at least until recently pretty low unemployment.
Bit of a long answer to a short question, but that is a quick view of why pay and benefits are what they are.