Did you know that nearly 8 out of 10 firefighters in the United States are volunteers? There are approximately 31,000 fire departments in the US and 75 % of them are all volunteer. If the volunteers were all paid it would cost the taxpayer an additional $35 Billion dollars a year in extra taxes. The Klein Volunteer Fire Department has 100 all volunteer members. The value of these volunteers is tremendous amounting to something like $500,000 to $1,000,000 per year if they were paid for their services. But, they are not, and that answers the first question, how KVFD provides the services we do with tax dollars we receive.

The largest number of volunteers nationally are between the ages of 35 and 45 In Klein the age group shifts slightly lower but is still fairly representative of the national average. People volunteer for lots of reasons. The younger members like the increased responsibility, camaraderie, excitement, and physical challenge that fire fighting gives them. Some have used their volunteer experiences to develop careers in the fire service. Others volunteer because they have a sense of obligation to the community, enjoy the recognition being part of the volunteers brings, find it personally rewarding or just want to have fun. Whatever the reason it really doesn’t matter. What matters is they did volunteer.

Recruiting of volunteers has been and continues to be a big job for KVFD. The most common way volunteers are recruited is by personal contact with existing members and by Word of Mouth. Before a tax base was established in the fire district, volunteers were often recruited during door to door fund raising events. Klein still makes use of community events for recruiting like pancake breakfast at the local fire stations and other activities where Klein sponsors a public fire education booth. Wide scale media events and direct mail to local residents has also been tried but has not been very successful. 

Individuals planning to volunteer often ask the same questions during their initial interview before joining. The three most common questions and our answers are listed below:

How much time will it take?

The initial training takes 50 hours of classroom and hands on training stretched out over three months. Almost all of our volunteers have full time jobs. The training is conducted at night and on the weekends. to minimize any conflicts with jobs. After completion of basic training a volunteer will be required to attend 8 hours per quarter of training to stay an active member.

Do I have the skills?

We teach you all the technical skills you need to be an excellent firefighter. The volunteer brings with them their own personal life skills that they use. These are shared with everyone. The administration and management of the fire department is also all volunteer so skills brought from the volunteer’s work careers are very valuable to the department

What do I really have to do?

It is up to you. You can train to be an interior fire fighter or choose to stay outside and just assist on the scene with other items. There are dozen of jobs which have to be done to support the small number of fire fighters who actually attack the fire from inside the structure. Most volunteers find their niche with in the first year. No one asks anyone to do anything they are not comfortable in doing. 

Retaining members is also a challenge for Klein. Today there are more and more time pressures on all members of the department. Down sizing in our jobs has lead to greater workloads. Both partners working limits the available free time to use for training and fire responses. However, with the advent of the virtual office maybe the work place has moved back into the community and this may be a new resource from which the fire depart can draw recruits. If you are interested in becoming a member of KVFD visit the other pages of our web site to get additional information and an application for membership. If you don’t live in the fire district we would love to hear from you but we can’t offer you membership. However you can always consider moving to Klein to become a volunteer.

Next time we will discuss some of the special training KVFD gives to their volunteers.
 
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