Volunteer fire departments across Texas face recruitment challenges

Volunteer fire departments across the state say they are struggling with recruitment. 

Sam Bass Fire Department is a combination department, which means they have both paid and volunteer firefighters.

"Recruitment's been tough," training officer Chris Jones said. 

He has been with the department for 18 years. Right now, they have 15 volunteer firefighters. When Jones started, they had about 30. 

"This is the worst that I've seen it," Jones said. "A lot of people get into it because of the cool T-shirts, but they find out the amount of work that they have to do, and some of them are like, 'you know what, this isn't for me.'"

If the department doesn't have enough staff, they'll ask nearby fire departments to help, but that also makes those communities short on staff.

"Wildfire season right now is when we really need the staffing," Jones said. "The more people we have, the easier it is on the paid staff, because we can actually go do these big incidents, we can go to this big structure fire that's going to take 50 people, and we can count on the volunteers having our back to be able to run medical calls, run the other car wrecks, and whatnot that are within our district while we're on this major call."

For rural volunteer fire departments, the Texas A&M Forest Service has a grant program to help with recruitment. 

"We want them to be successful. All of our fire departments, we want to partner with them so that the fire response capacity in the state is very strong and robust and can help people on their worst day," said Jason Keiningham, Dept. Head of Capacity Building at Texas A&M Forest Service.

Brazos County Precinct 4 Volunteer Fire Department in Bryan is one that was recently approved for the grant. 

"We're going to use that money to help with advertising in our precinct," Chief Joe Warren said.

They only have 10 active volunteers, while their roster is capped at 25. 

"It's hard to get people in the community to volunteer because of family time, there are a lot of hours you have to put in to get certified," Warren said.

No matter where you live, the message from fire officials across the state is the same: apply to your local volunteer fire department if you want to help out. 

"If you want to just serve your community, serve the public and serve your area where you live, come down to Sam Bass, volunteer," Jones said. 

For more information on the Texas A&M Forest Service grant, click here.

WeatherCrime and Public Safety