With very few exceptions, fire departments start off as totally volunteer. Even the largest firefighting agencies in the United States at some point were volunteer, and many firefighting agencies remain so today. Of course, there are fully paid departments with no remains of their volunteer legacies. That's the proverbial black and white of the fire service: paid or volunteer. But there's also that shade of gray that causes some controversy and yet is reality — the combination fire department.

When I use the term combination, I'm not saying that there's one specific combination. Instead there are multiple shades of gray. For example, in my career I have had a chance to work with fire departments that have a paid chief and totally volunteer staff. I have also seen fire departments with a volunteer chief and paid staff. There are many descriptions for personnel that imply a part-time or transitional phase from volunteer to paid. Reserves, interns and paid-on-call members are part of the fabric of fire departments transitioning to a combination agency.

One doesn't have to look too far to find an organization engaged in one or more debates over the impact of this aspect of the fire service. Generally speaking, however, volunteer fire departments exist where volunteer fire departments are needed, and paid fire departments exist where paid fire departments are needed. Combination departments are those that are transitioning from one economic and social condition to another. In my opinion, the state of a fire department is not so much a factor of what the firefighters want but rather what the community wants.

The legacy of the volunteer firefighter goes very deep in this country. One doesn't have to look too far in a history book before finding positive depictions that range from the ever-present description of Benjamin Franklin up to the Norman Rockwell image from The Saturday Evening Post. In my personal collection I have several examples of how the fire service was perceived in the 1940s.

But if you pick up a fire service publication today, you're likely to read an article about the two-hatter issue, much like this magazine's “Brother vs. Brother” in January 2003. This controversy revolves around labor organizations that are reluctant to allow their members to also serve as volunteers in another community. It isn't my intent to debate this issue, but I would like to shed some light on why it is the way it is today.

There are many people who started their careers as volunteers, but once they become full-time firefighters, they begin to look upon the volunteers with a significant amount of disdain. This is an unfortunate contradiction and a false controversy. It has nothing to do with the most essential reason why fire departments exist in the first place — reflecting what the community needs and wants, not the firefighters.

Let's consider how communities come into existence in the first place. One doesn't normally go out to a wide swath of vacant land, construct a firehouse in the middle, and then invite people to build their homes and businesses around it. To the contrary, land-use policies in most parts of this country do not consider fire protection as one of the trigger points for growth and development. What generally happens is that as land becomes available, growth occurs based on economic reasons. The value system that allows a person to build a home out where there's no fire protection is based on the Jacksonian democracy principle that people have the right to do what they want while the government stays out of their way.

I often find myself flying across this country in a commercial airliner and looking out the windows at the distribution of communities. During the day it's real easy to spot communities because of the vast network of roads and density that equal “town.” But at night when you look down and see the vast darkness and scattered light, you realize that in a significant part of the country the population density laid out on the land is relatively sparse.

If we were to take a given area and look at the population and measure its density over a square mile, it's easy to see that in areas where there are very few people, it's very unlikely that there will be a paid fire department. There's nobody to pay the bill! I have often heard quotes about the number of “firefighters per 1,000” that must exist to provide adequate fire protection. Very few people cite that the number is not representative of the country overall but rather the number of firefighters in the cities and towns that report to the International City/County Management Association. In other words, the number of firefighters per 1,000 depends heavily on having thousands of people to pay for them.

The justification for a volunteer fire department coming into existence is pretty simple. It usually starts either with a catastrophic event or an altruistic citizen. In the sparsely populated areas of the country, someone or some organization raised a hand and stated the need for a fire truck — not necessarily a fire department — to handle the inconvenience of a periodic emergency.

If you take a look at the amount of people living within a square mile, you'll have a pretty good idea as to what kind of fire protection is required. The lack of people living in vast stretches of Wyoming or Montana allows you to understand intuitively that minus a forestry firefighting operation, such areas are protected by totally volunteer fire departments.

Of course, you also can see a certain amount of density in those states. Wide spots in the road, hamlets, downshifts and incipient communities almost always start up because of some economic reason that brings people closer together. The “crossroads effect” is when an infrastructure grows around the intersection of two main roads to support the lower density in the areas down the road. For example, I know of one volunteer fire department that covers five buildings: a feed store, a filling station, a restaurant, a Quonset hut fire station and a residence.

After looking at literally thousands of fire departments over my career, I have drawn some conclusions about the rules of thumb that drive the nature of fire protection. They are population density, community values, response workload and ability to pay.

In terms of population density, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the four-minute response travel time as recommended in system-of-cover studies or the 1H-mile maximum travel distance specified by the Insurance Services Office creates fairly small polygons to be superimposed on a map. If the population living within that polygon is fewer than 10,000, a full-time fire department is highly unlikely. Of course, there are many small communities that benefit from regional paid fire services, but a free-standing community of fewer than 10,000 people in the response polygon is very unlikely to be able to afford its own fire service. These communities usually prize their small-town values. It's not uncommon for these communities to place a significant premium on volunteer work to support many of the normal functions of government.

Once you go over 10,000 people in that response polygon and begin to approach a community size of about 20,000, there are significant pressures that often result in paid firefighting forces being added to supplement volunteers. In many communities the first choice is to hire a full-time paid fire chief. What drives this, however, is not significant change in the ability to pay but rather an increasing demand for level of service.

It's not uncommon for communities of less than 10,000 to have a relatively low response rate. Fires are extremely infrequent. But if the community desires a BLS level of service, a lot of pressure would be placed on volunteer forces. If you look at the response workload of most similar communities, 500 to 600 calls per year is about normal. Once a volunteer fire company goes over 1,000 calls per year, it begins to place a great deal of pressure on the volunteer system. Individuals can't be dropping what they are doing three times a day to rush off to administer the community's needs. If the average call takes up to an hour, that could mean as much as third of a working day for a dedicated volunteer.

At the range of 10,000 to 20,000 people in a response polygon, it's not uncommon for the fire department to choose to place its initial investment in assets into either supervision or apparatus operations to improve on the level of service. It isn't that the volunteers have lost their usefulness; it's a matter of response workload.

If a community goes over 20,000, that is when the combination fire departments really begin to take shape. After you reach 20,000 people, the infrastructure begins to solidify. Fire tends to be one of the last infrastructure components to come into existence on a full-time basis. If you look at the history of most communities, the police department precedes the development of the fire department by about 20 years.

As populations approach 30,000, it becomes incredibly difficult to sustain volunteer fire departments. Response workload along with community expectations begins to increase. After 30,000 it's almost impossible to sustain a combination department. This isn't because of a loss of utility, but rather that those individuals who were available to become reserves, interns or other forms of supplemental staffing tend to be otherwise occupied.

Based on these rules of thumb, I go back to a very simple premise: Communities that have volunteers probably need them. Communities that have full-time paid fire departments probably need them. There really is no inherent conflict with either end of that spectrum. Almost all of the arguments seem to center on the transition process from one to another. It's also true to note that very few fire departments have gone fully paid and then reverse themselves and become volunteer.

What drives the fire department in terms of its organizational structure is a combination of community need and community financing. This is where the true arguments are generated. One of the worst things that often happens in smaller agencies is that someone will decide a full-time force is needed and treats the volunteers and/or reserves in a less-than-professional manner. They're literally run off, yet the community doesn't have the financial resources to adequately staff the firehouse. Neither the community nor the paid firefighters are being adequately served at that point.

There are those in the fire service who have recognized this sequence of events. Among the most notable is the International Association of Fire Chiefs and its Volunteer and Combination Officers Section. Past-president John Buckman, who was one of the advocates of that section, has worked diligently to help fire departments understand, adopt and execute all of the proper policies and procedures it takes to keep a fire department operating at a high level of service in spite of its organizational configuration. Membership in the IAFC'S VCOS provides the chief officers in volunteer and combination departments with an excellent networking resource to do their jobs more effectively.

The tendency to artificially divide the fire service along the lines of volunteer and paid belies the fact that we have a need for both. Respect, not resentment, is the hallmark of professionalism on both sides of this argument. Those volunteer departments that can sustain a firefighting agency that's both competent and viable are to be admired. I know of several volunteer fire departments in which the intensity of their training and their commitment to excellence is second to none.

There also are communities in which volunteer fire departments simply would not function; having some fully paid staff is absolutely essential to provide the level of service demanded by that community. But finding ways to bond between the volunteer and paid groups is a challenge for such organizations. Failure to do so doesn't mean that either party is looking better than the other, but rather that the community they both serve is being denied the best of all worlds.

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With more than 40 years in the fire service, Ronny J. Coleman has served as fire chief in Fullerton and San Clemente, Calif., and was the fire marshal of the State of California from 1992 to 1999. He is a certified fire chief and a master instructor in the California Fire Service Training and Education System. A Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers, he has an associate's degree in fire science, a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in vocational education.