To all those departments either thinking about making the move to a combination department or are in the middle of the transition, be patient with everyone involved and try to look at how every decision is going to affect everyone in the department. Change is hard, and supplementing a professional, dedicated volunteer staff with career firefighters can be a tricky road filled with landmines that tend to be very messy when they blow up in your face.

Strong leadership, unity of command and equal treatment were the keys to the successful transition of the Kearney (Mo.) Fire and Rescue Protection District. The interesting story is how we went from three paid firefighters/EMTs and a volunteer chief in 1991 to a mostly career department with 12 career firefighters, half of whom are paramedics, and a career chief who once was the volunteer chief. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy.

The first landmine that my department tried very hard to avoid was a feeling of separation between the volunteers and the career staff. The chief made it very clear that everyone was to be treated the same. The term “professional firefighter” wasn't used to describe career firefighters, as the entire staff was expected to act in a professional manner. Everyone helped clean up after a call, and those who made the statement that that's what the career guys got paid for were quickly corrected by the officer staff. Don't let me give you the impression that this was 100% successful, because there was still some animosity between the two groups. The career firefighters were made to understand early on that they could not run the calls without the help of the volunteers, but the volunteers could run calls without them.

The second landmine we hit head-on and from my perspective was our biggest problem. There was no unity in command in the department. When an officer came through the door of the fire station, we did not know if we were going to have to drop our previous duties to cater to his needs. Calls were sometimes a disaster, with officer egos getting in the way of dealing with the incident. I had to break up elevating arguments between two lieutenants on the front pad of the fire station as it was very close to becoming an all-out brawl. Chain-of-command issues should be carefully thought-out, taking into account the unity of command theory.

The third landmine was unavoidable because of the nature of our community. The town is growing at a highly accelerated rate. Call volume increased from around 380 calls in 1991 to around 1,000 calls in 2003. As the call volume increased and the stresses of living in the area increased, the volunteer staff began to decrease drastically. We lost a few members as a result of the types of calls that they were starting to see. An explosion that injured some of our neighboring firefighters at my father's department caused some to re-evaluate why they were here. There were some who left because they disagreed with where the organization was headed. New groups of volunteers were coming in, but only a few became permanent members of the department.

The fourth and last landmine that really sticks out in my head is the gap in training that eventually started to separate the career staff from the volunteer staff. We had some former career firefighters and even current career ones volunteering, but for the most part the separation in training became an issue. When the need for certification in areas such as hazmat and even basic certification like Firefighter I and II and paramedic training became musts, it was hard for those working full-time jobs to keep up. A few completed the certification, but for the most part those were the people trying to get full-time positions as firefighters.

We are still trying to deal with this issue and have a few great ideas that are currently working for us. We have reimbursed shifts that pay volunteers to come in and spend a total of 48 hours a month working. During these shifts we try to help them stay up-to-date on training issues. The pay increases if they have an EMT or paramedic license. Some thought has been given to increasing pay for certification levels as well, but that still is in the discussion stage.

We have a junior firefighter program that helps us with retention and recruitiment of both volunteers and future career staff. The kids are recruited at age 13, and they begin the firefighter training right away. Our current full-time staff includes six former junior firefighters. By the time they are 18, most of these kids have five years of firehouse and even some scene experience. Many have their EMT license by their senior year in high school.

We tend to recruit from within our volunteer ranks. We grow our own firefighters and train them to the standard that we demand. This gives the career-minded volunteer a great reason to be active.