The fire department needs volunteers.
It’s a hard choice because of the time commitment and the difficulty in maintaining a balance between private life, steady employment and honouring ones duties with the department.
As you will read in the story on our front page, Barrhead Fire Department chief John Whittaker outlined some of his concerns with respect to finding people who are willing to dedicate the time to the department necessary to do the job well.
And for our part, we understand too.
It is difficult to run a business when your employees may have to leave at a moment’s notice, regardless of the fact that the service provided by said employee being a volunteer firefighter is a necessity and one no community can survive without.
On the other hand, what if it was your business or home or farm that was on fire?
It is a tough question to ask, a tough spot to be in.
One of the options to tackle this issue would be to forgo the whole volunteer model and pursue a salaried, full-time department, although this would put serious strain on the municipalities involved and likely raise taxes some more to compensate for the expense.
Whittaker himself says he doesn’t think having a full-time, paid department is the answer but he also thinks the current model is not working either.
Whittaker proposes something of a hybrid, where a staff of five or six would be paid and on duty Monday to Friday, while the bulk of the department’s voluntary firefighters were preoccupied with their nine-to-fives.
It would give employers breathing space and could potentially keep more of our trained firefighters in the area, rather than see them depart for greener pastures.
At the Barrhead Leader, we have discussed the situation amongst ourselves and agree that something needs to be done — in our opinion, a community without a fire department is not truly safe.
Perhaps the hybrid option would work, perhaps not.
But clearly something needs to be done because the volunteer is a dying breed.
