Ellis Island is where many people arrived from their country of birth for the chance to become American citizens. Many of the individuals who chose to immigrate to this country were seeking opportunities that were otherwise denied them in their own countries, such as economic potential. Others were running away from something. But in almost all cases, it made no difference why someone had migrated, but rather the fact that they had chosen to do so.

There's an interesting migration taking place today that's beginning to have an effect on the fire service. Its members are known as “equity emigrants.” Fueled by an incredibly successful housing market, many individuals who work and own homes in a densely populated area are seeing the value of their properties skyrocket. As they approach retirement age and know that they're going to be living on a fixed income, many choose to sell that pricey piece of property and move elsewhere. While I am most familiar with this phenomenon in California, it's happening in other parts of the country, too.

Like many before them, these equity emigrants are looking for a higher quality of life. They take all of their money out of a piece of property and use it to buy a home in a much less densely populated area. The home that's purchased is usually less expensive than the one that was sold, thereby giving the owner an opportunity to put a little money in the bank. In addition, these homes are usually in areas that have much lower property taxes.

What does this trend mean to local fire protection? In some cases, it doesn't mean a darn thing. There are firefighting agencies that have seen an influx of these folks with minimal impact on the community because geographic or economic conditions have allowed the absorption of this population without placing any new or unnecessarily complex demands on the fire department.

In some areas, however, there are problems. Many of these equity emigrants come into a new neighborhood expecting the level of emergency service to be absolutely identical to where they last lived. But it isn't. The disparity is fairly simple to explain. Many of the communities outside of the core urban and suburban areas have a rural if not outright wide-open-spaces feel. When a person sells a $900,000 house in downtown America and moves into a $700,000 castle out in the country — this is California, remember? — there may be biases, prejudices and expectations that go unnoticed until a first responder is needed for either a fire or emergency medical aid.

When people buy a home in these remote areas, they seldom are advised that the fire department isn't as readily available as those to which they may be accustomed. In fact, many equity emigrants fully expect to receive suburban levels of service in unincorporated areas. Moreover, when they're driving down the street and see a fire station with big red letters on the top, they have no idea if it's a fully paid fire station staffed by career personnel, or a totally volunteer fire organization that may not even be responsible for those newly purchased homes.

By now some of you might have recognized yourself and your community. If you have, then you have my empathy. I find that many of the communities facing this problem often suffer from two almost mutually exclusive phenomena. There's a high level of expectation for you to provide service consistent with the emigrants' demands, but you must do so with an absolute minimum of money because those same emigrants aren't interested in providing any tax support for fire protection.

At one level, this is downright hypocritical. At another level, it's simply just very naïve. Most of the people with whom I have discussed this concept are consumers of emergency services who simply don't know what they're buying into when they move into their new community. Euphoric with the idea that they're getting this brand-new home in this brand-new area, they seldom ask the real questions about the community's infrastructure.

If you're like many other folks, you can probably recall a time when you bought your first home. If you were raising children at that time, you were likely to have asked questions about the local school district. But when retirees move into their new home in the country, they don't really think too much about municipal services. Granted, there are individuals with medical problems who want to know something about the local hospital and may even have a lot of curiosity about the ambulance service, but fire protection as a priority for equity emigrants is probably number 100 on a list of 99.

What can we do about this? In one respect, if you're a fire chief who has experienced this phenomenon, it's not your fault. On the other hand, if you're in a community that's experiencing this dilemma, it is somebody's fault. For example, the real estate and development communities market their product to individuals who have no idea that they're participating in the creation of a problem.

This is where the concept of public education takes on a totally different implication. We have grown accustomed to the idea that we must educate people on fire safety so that they can better protect themselves. But the concept of public education needs to be broadened to also make people aware of their level of service.

In my travels, one of the things that I've seen to improve this level of community awareness is an annual newspaper insert that consists of information on fire safety. For the most part, I have seen a significant number of these pieces dedicated to wildland-urban interface issues. But I also have seen several done by volunteer fire departments and regional fire departments to let the community know what they're getting for their tax dollars.

To make this happen, you need to work closely with the local newspaper to seek advertising revenue that will pay for the cost for its annual insert. Of course, any type of one-shot operation of this nature isn't going to do the whole job. Nonetheless, it's important for fire departments with community expectations that are out of kilter with reality to do everything they can to communicate what level of service is actually available.

Another example I might cite is the belief that any fire department faced with funding issues needs to invest a small amount of money to promote itself to everybody who receives services. This may not be as complicated as you think. For example, send a postcard to everybody who calls for your service. It doesn't have to do anything more than tell the customer you're a totally volunteer fire department that depends on a very limited amount of financial resources. This message will arrive at a time when customers are most susceptible to the lesson because they just used your services.

This concept also can work for poorly funded and overworked smaller agencies if they rethink their business cards. Add some text that describes the type and quality of services being offered by your organization, keep these new cards on each piece of apparatus so they can be handed out to everybody at the scene of an emergency.

Unfortunately, many fire departments just suffer this phenomenon in silence. They continue to grit their teeth, fully aware that they can't meet all community expectations. They hope that sooner or later the assessed valuation of their tax base will grow sufficiently to resolve their problems. Suffering in silence is a time-honored technique. However, it certainly doesn't do anything to alter the outcome, and it doesn't do anything to reduce the level of stress.

Recognizing the phenomenon of equity emigration is step one of the recovery process. Those agencies that recognize it's happening should focus a significant amount of effort and energy on educating the new residents as to what's really going on. In fact, because it's often the most recent arrivals who have the highest expectations, contact the local welcome wagon and provide them with information that could be put in the package given to every newcomer who moves into your community.

Or you can do nothing.

They say that chance favors the prepared mind. Therefore, those agencies that recognize that they have an issue with this particular scenario can try one or more of these public awareness campaigns to alter the public's expectation. Which technique is it going to be for you?

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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.