When was the last time you saw a “Help Wanted” sign posted on the front door of a fire station? For those of you who live in urban areas, probably never. Whenever we have a job opening for a full-time paid firefighter, there are usually hundreds of candidates. Granted, that isn't the case for the volunteer fire service, but in general we don't have to look very far.

The legacy of the American fire service is that almost all fire departments start off as volunteer agencies, spend some time as a combination department and end up as a full-time paid department when the population and economic indicators provide for the funds. Once a department had reached that point, firefighters relied on the paid fire service's track record of stable employment.

That can't be taken for granted anymore. Many communities have had reductions in force following economic downturns and even cities shrinking in size. But that's nothing compared to the private sector, where we read regularly of massive layoffs. It takes a major catastrophic financial disaster within local government to put fire service jobs on the line — or does it?

If USFA statistics are accurate, a significant amount of this country is still protected by the volunteer fire service, which is having a great deal of difficulty sustaining its work force. This is partly the result of people in contemporary society not having the sense of community that they once had. I can show you hundreds of small communities that have sprung up on the periphery of some of the urban areas with extremely expensive homes occupied by commuter citizens who demand their fire protection be the equivalent of what they had in urban society. Yet they aren't the least bit willing to spend their Tuesday nights on drills or to drop what they're doing to rush to the aid of their neighbor.

Many volunteer fire departments are attempting to sustain a level of service for an unappreciative community that also isn't willing to provide the funds to put full-time firefighters in stations. The same may be said for many small and medium fire agencies, maybe even for some metros. I have witnessed angry citizens campaign against bond increases because they felt that their taxes would be too high — and they had a volunteer fire department. Others have voted down initiatives that could have built fire stations and training centers. When it comes to “help wanted” in the fire service, something has to give.

In recent dialogue with fire officers around the country, I've noted that an increasing number of young individuals have joined the volunteer fire service with only one intent: gain enough experience to qualify for a job as a full-time paid firefighter somewhere else. I'm not about to knock that technique. When I was fire chief in San Clemente, Calif., I spent a great deal of time ensuring that my people were adequately trained and given sufficient amount of experience so that they would be competitive when they went for jobs in other communities.

Another issue that comes up quite frequently is that volunteers aren't given adequate benefits for any kind of long-term protection. Granted, some states have created voluntary length-of-service award programs, and most have a provision that provides state compensation insurance to a volunteer who becomes injured. But where are the benefits beyond that? Some volunteer fire departments have gone as far as buying apartments to provide housing for their young, single firefighters, and many volunteer departments have established funds for firefighters' tuition. But neither of these is universally available.

Beyond the lack of benefits, there's yet another phenomenon to overcome before staffing can be improved. Far too many politicians think that having a volunteer fire department means firefighting is free. It isn't. It costs money to put anybody on the fireground. There has to be adequate funding for equipment, tools and inventory to be able to do the job, and there has to be an adequate amount of protective clothing. Funds need to be to set aside to conduct an adequate form of training. A fire burning in the most remote village follows the same rules of physics and chemistry as one in a downtown metropolitan area. No, the volunteer fire service isn't free.

One solution that some volunteer departments are adopting recognizes that a volunteer does not have to be a firefighter. With more record-keeping requirements, federal and state mandates, and other number-crunching activities, some volunteer departments have decided that they need some assistance from the brains rather than the brawn of “non-traditional volunteers.” An accountant who lacks the physical skills and abilities to perform as a firefighter might keep a department out of financial troubles. A local schoolteacher who is too frail to combat fire might be an excellent public educator. Many volunteer fire departments are fleshing out their level of service by looking for help in reducing the fire problem.

Of course, the career fire service isn't immune from staffing issues that stem from a loss of community. More and more, as soon as someone becomes a member of a paid force, his first action is to move as far away from that community as he possibly can afford. Many of our paid firefighters are no longer members of the very communities that they're being paid to serve, but I don't blame them one bit. If people can earn a fairly substantial salary and move to a more desirable neighborhood, they'd be crazy not to.

Many of these moves are made possible by firefighters basing their lifestyles on the ability to earn overtime pay. The whole concept of C-shift firefighters running a business on their days off is giving way to firefighters earning their C shift by working overtime. Once again, who can we blame for that? The economic system itself is moving in that direction, and there have been conscious public-policy decisions that are resulting in an increase in this phenomenon in many locations.

We often compare ourselves to our brothers and sisters in law enforcement, but they don't have this problem. Although they're working three shifts, those shifts are on an eight-hour workday. Therefore, moving — from patrol to detective, detective to administration, administration back into the field — isn't a social inconvenience but part of the career-development process. As a result, the upper mobility of law enforcement officers is probably more intense now than ever before.

Firefighters' reliance on additional income means many fire departments are having a difficult time filling staff jobs such as fire prevention, training and administrative positions. I wouldn't classify this as a crisis at this point, but I would see this as a warning sign that could have a long-term impact on the fire service. More than a few fire chiefs have found themselves behind close doors explaining the Fair Labor Standards Act to city councilors and auditors. To address this problem, departments are staffing these positions with civilians, which can create quite a barrier between the haves and haves-not.

If we take these two phenomena, the volunteer staffing problem and the reduction of the paid fire service, together, they could portend a sea change in what the American fire service will look like 50 years from now. “So what?” you say; most of us won't be around then. That's very true, but our organizations will be. They will continue to evolve in accordance with some of these trends and patterns. I believe that the lack of long-term vision is one of the reasons why some of these problems are arising today.

For example, I recall an argument many years ago with a group of people planning a recruit academy. They had scheduled 42 hours of hose rolling in the recruit academy. Now, I'm not sure how long it takes to teach someone how to roll a hose, but I think that reasonably intelligent, physically capable human beings ought to be able to do it in a lot fewer than 42 hours.

The debate came after I proposed to emphasize fire behavior, building construction and fire prevention in the recruit academy. I noted that in the British Fire College recruit academy, there are up to 60 hours of fire prevention training that comes out of their initial schooling. In addition, the fire service has a different working relationship with its personnel in regard to functioning within the fire prevention capacity. We took a vote on adjusting the academy's focus. I was outvoted 7-1.

This misplaced focus continues to this day. I was once at a recruit academy graduation where the class president spent 75% of his keynote speech talking about what a great job he had just received that would allow him all sorts of time off to enjoy other elements of his lifestyle. If that is the message we're sending, it can backfire on us.

The longer we continue to preach to our entry-level firefighters the benefits of working only 100 days a year and having the remainder off, the less likely they're going to get it. The more we tell the firefighters that they're going to be involved in physical, knock-down, drag-out firefighting, the more likely it is that we're going to lose their enthusiasm for the profession when they're bored silly sitting in fire stations waiting for the big one.

Some of these thoughts might be foreign to many of you reading this column. I will admit readily that I like to fight a big fire just as much as anybody else. But I believe that the fire protection work force of the future is going to be different from the one we have had in the past. One of our jobs as fire chiefs is to help create an environment where our “Help Wanted” signs attract the right type of people to do the right kind of job for the future.

Just think: It could be a grandchild or a great-grandchild of yours who has to carry on the destiny of Benjamin Franklin's original vision, the protection of life and property. They should have all of the tools to do the job, don't you think?

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.